The Sun.
London, England, 1844-03-23 00:00:00

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station of life in Liverpool. He ,
—members of his own constiti
were much worse off than the o;
He dreaded that this measure
stead of realising all the benefits itqatit*MtV
would tend to aggravate a great of those evils.
He (Sir. W. Clay) could only say that he had bestowed
considerable attention upon the matter, and he w,,eld
bear his share of the responsibility, by expressing his
coincidence of opinion with the Right Hon. Baronet op-
posite, that the reduction of the amount of the opera-
tives' wages would be nearly 25 per cent., instead of what
the Noble Lord had stated. It had been said that if
there were no manufacturers in other countries, pi ices
would rise, but that was not the case; they were running a
race with various foreign nations,and had to combat against
a very strong and powerful competition. They could
not have two separate prices for the heme and the fo-
reign markets, for that of the home market must always
be regulated by the foreign one. The principle sought
to be laid down might do very well for the large manu-
facturers, who exported to the amount of thirty or forty
millions, but it would certainly tend to produce a cor-
responding diminution of labour ; and he would entreat
the House to reflect well upon the vvoful effects which
follow, and had followed, the dearth of emplovim nt
which the manufacturing districts suffered under some
time ago, and to consider if the objects proposed would
compensate for the enormous defalcation of employment.
The Hon. Member for Ashton, when alluding to the
report of 1834, proposed a remedy for this state of
things. The Hon. Member proposed that the country
should endeavour to persuade foreign nations to adopt a.
similar course of legislation with this country. But he
(Sir W. Clay) was afraid the House could not see the
likelihood of succeeding in effecting this object. He
confessed that the Noble Lord seemed to him (Sir W.
Clay) to have imbibed some peculiar opinion that the
profits of the manufacturer were so enormously large
that they could afford so far to sacrifice their income-; as
to pay the operatives for working only ten hours the
same sum which they did for twelve hours' work.--
(Hear, hear.) In the present superabundant
state of the money market he did not see
how the Noble Lord could form such an opinion,
The large capitalists would not suffer so much, it was
true ; but it would press most severely on all the lower
class of persons engaged in manufacture ; for if a bur-
den was imposed upon the master, it must, most as-
suredly, fall upon the operative ; and in the speech of the
Noble Lord, he laid particular stress upon the medical
evidence, which stated a female in a state of pregnancy
ought not to be compelled or permitted to work for
twelve hours a day. Now he (Sir W. Clay) would ask
the Nohlo Lord ono question, which he thought would
show that this was not so good a point as the Noble
Lord seemed to imagine. The question he would ask
the Noble Lord was, if it was fit that a female should,
when in such a condition, be allowed to work for ten
hours—the time contemplated by the Noble Lord's Bill ?
He conceded that the Bill afforded facilities for the de-
tection of fraud ; it also prevented women and children
from working in factories from night till morning. In
these respects he agreed with it. But he would ask the
Noble Lord whether he might not direct his benevolent
efforts to other departments of labour ? There was
scarcely any department of labour in which the efforts of
the Noble Lord were not more wanted. The Noble
Lord had shown that highest of human qualities, enthu-
siasm in well-doing, without which nothing great could
be accomplished. He entreated him, therefore, to direct
his attention to other branches of industry more requiring
his care ; and then, instead of having a narrow majority
in that House—(Hear, hear)—he would be supported by
its unanimous voice and the universal approbation of the
community.
Mr. MONCKTON MILNES said, as a Member con-
nected with the great manufacturing district of the
West Riding of Yorkshire, in which this question
excited so much interest, he hoped he should be excused
from shortly addressing the House on this question.
He rose under a conviction that it would be his duty to
oppose the Government, with which he usually acted ;
he felt a conviction that the course the Government had
taken on this question was attended neither with ben: fit
to the country nor dignity to themselves.—(Cheers from
the Opposition.) In the course of last session, the
Right Hon. Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home
Department brought forward another Factory
They all knew how it was met, and how it was foiled.
He did think that, in yielding to the agitation mani-
fested, the Right Hon. Baronet took a course as
little dignified then, as his persisting in his present
course was now.—(Cheers.) Had the Right Hon. Ba-
ronet then persevered, he for one would have been ready
to have risked his seat to have supported him. Untl.r
what a different aspect the question came before them
at present, to what it did last year. The agitation
which the Right Hon. Baronet now met, and so stre-
nuously opposed, was one that had lasted ten years,
which excited the most vivid attention and the deepest
interest among a large portion of the people, and which
was now confirmed by a solemn decision of that House.
—(Hear,.hear.) They were now asked to come d ,wrt
on so rare an occasion to rescind the solemn resolution
of that House, come to after an adjourned debate of three
days, without any pretence of casualty or haste, be-
cause the Government wished to take advantage of
any chance or contingency that might enable
it to reverse the former decision.—(Hear, he.aa)
The Hon. Member for the Tower Hamlets who had pre-
ceded him had undertaken the difficult task of showing
that the whole matter was a dream of philanthropic
enthusiasm on the part of the Noble Lord ; he held outt,
the state of the factory children and women as so satis-
factory that it was almost impertinent in that House to
interfere with them. He had hoped that that question.
had been settled for ever. He had hoped that they all
knew that thousands and thousands of children Ist the
manufacturing districts were being brought up in a eon-.
dition more degraded than that of a slave population,
(Oh, oh)—that thousands perished annually On. the
threshold of manhood, physically and morally unable to
meet the difficulties of life.---;Hear, hear.) In the presi at
year, as in the last, the Government had come down to
the House with a Bill interfering with labour. lle
considered the speech of the Right Honourable Rano-
at the head of the Government against this propo-
sition, applied with much greater force against the prin-
ciple of any interference at all, than against the modifi-
cation of it, which was proposed by the Noble Lord the
Member for Dorsetshire. All that the Noble Lord had
proposed was, that the children, after passing the age of
13, should not be put at once to the dreadful toil oftwelve
hours a day. The Hon. Baronet, the Member fur the
Tower Hamlets, had tried to make out that twelve
hours' labour a day was extremely light; and such as he
himself would not mind undertaking. He said This on
the authority of Mr. Senior; but he believed if the
Hon. Baronet and Mr. Senior had but a week's expe-
rience of it themselves they would come to a very dif-
ferent opinion on that subject.—(Hear, hear.) He (Mr.
Milnes) attached more weight to the opinions
of Dr. Hawkins and the medical men of Man-
chester, than the statement of Mr. Senior,
who from his villa at Knightsbridge paid the manufac-
turing districts only a flying visit. But there was an-
other part of this question to which he wished to refer
—that was the effect of this proposition on the wages of
the operatives. Wherever the principle of wages had
been scientifically laid down, he had always understood
that there were four elements by which the amount cif
wages was regulated ; these were population, capita?,
the fluctuations in the price of produce, and the standard
of living. Neither of these, taken separately and insu-
lated from the rest, could have any effect on wages—
they all depended on each other. He could not believe,.
therefore, that a small reduction in the manufacturer's:
profit could have such an effect in reducing wages as;
seemed to be apprehended. He would solemnly'
ask the Committee to look well at wi
they n ere doing before they rescinded the
former decision of the House. He asked them to consider
under what a different aspect the question came before
them now. Let them remember that it had gone forth to
every village and hamlet in the manufacturing districts-
that there was now a majority of the representatives or
the people who had declared it to be their opinion that
children ought not to be worked more than ten tears
a-day. At that moment the people were speaking of it
to one another, telling each other that the noble
exertions of the Noble Lord had at last accom-
plished the object for which he had contended,
by ten years of unwearied exertion on his part,
and of unceasing hope on theirs. Could the Go-
vernment suppose that a decision of the House, re--
versing the former vote, obtained by any means they
might command, would have the effect of turning back
the river from its course, or make the people of England
forget the decision of the former night ? They would
not forget it ; and if they were likely to do so, his Noble
Friend would take care that they did not. But
he thought it comparatively of small importance
what might be the result of the vote of that
evening ; the fate of the measure was settb.d.
The Ten Hours' Bill was as much at that moment the
law of the land, as any other part of the interfering 13111
of the Government. He sincerely and heartily grieved
that the Government had set itself against the opinions,.
the sympathy, the good feeling, and religious sense of st
large portion of the people of England; and he wortalli
sit down by humbly imploring the Committee to ms-ist
the dangerous course the Government was pursuing, and
not, by so persisting, drive his Noble Friend to sonic,
desperate extremity (Cheers and laughter)
taking a step in which, he believed, he would be sup-
ported by a majority of that House—that of laying at
the feet of her Majesty herself the prayer of the people,
imploring the interference of her benevolence and noble
feelings against the short-sightedness, or rather the
blindness, of the Government.—(Ckeers.)
Mr. VERNON SMITH said he felt called on to
vote for a Ten Hours' Bill. The whole argument of the
oponents of the ten hours' system rested, the other even-
ing, on the ground that they ought not to interfere whit
labour at all. But he found that the Governinfait
had interfered in-the Bill with the freedom of labour.
—(Hear, hear.), But it might be said that children and
unmarried females were not free agents. That, he was
sorry to say, was the case with regard to a great portion
of the male population of the country ; and it was not
exclusively applicable to females that they were not free
to dispose of their labour. It was more in the power of
the master to say to the labourer " you shall work,".
than is the power of the labourer to say "I :
will not work. They interfered with labour on the!
ground of the helplessness of the children, and because
the system was tending to unhinge society altogether;
Perhaps there might be some doubt as to the propriety
of interfering with labour at' all, for in 1833 the pres-
sure was found to be so great that persons of all parth s
were determined upon interfering on behalf of children.
The question now proposed to him was, whether he
thought a child was capable of working twelve or ten
hours?—(Hear, hear.) He had no hesitation in answelr•-
ing such a question, and saying that he was decidedly in
favour of ten hours as the proper limit--(Hear, hear.)
He believed ho person would say that the children could
work twelve hours a day without injuring their moral
and physical constitution.—(Hear, hear.) The real
argument against the ten hours came from the Right
lion, Baronet the Secretary of State for the Home 1e-