The Sun.
London, England, 1842-05-17 00:00:00

ROYAL SURREY ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

'Mc Nobility, Gentry, Subscribers, and the Public, are respectfully
inLbruted that
THIS DAY, and THURSDAY NEXT,
A LTRAND FESTIVAL will be celebrated, in which will be embo-
died alitkiose popular Entertainments that have given to this favou-
rite plac tof recreation its peculiar celebrity, with additions and in.
trod ictio os, which it is confidently anticipa'ed will render them even
more gene rally attractive.
The ME IIiAGERIE has been enriched by many valuable and im-
portant acqu usitions in the classes of both Quadrupeds and Birds.
'I he Coins: al VIEW OF BOME has been repainted, and in some
instances rer coddled. Thz BAND will include some of the most
enuneqt PerCormers, conducted by Mr. Godfrey. The Programme
of the PROb.tENADES MUSICALES will be selected from the
noblest works tf the great Masters. The ILLUMINATION of ST.
PETER'S, the GIRANDOLA the FLAMING MESSEN.
GER, the ME'nEOR of ST. PETER'S, and a Grand HYDRO
PYRRHIC TABL EAU!
The Gardens are open Daily from Ten till Dusk. The Evening
Fetes, with the Promenades Musicales, Illumination of St. Peter's,
Girandola of St. Angelo, &c., will be given on Mondays, Tuesdays,
:and Thursdays. Admitis.lon One Shilling.

HIGH WATER AT ..T.ONDON BRIDGE THIS DAY.
3,1 ~),:ning 42 minutes after 6I Evening 11 minutes after 7.

.s.llvertisements of a Disgusting Character,
vv. Mmraoral Tendency, are excluded from
• Calumns of "The Sun."

are not to be tolerated,"saysanother4
barism and demoralization to which the annals of el=l
vilized Europe aftbrd no parallel," says a third re-
port; " reveals a state of things which would be
disgraceful to a barbarian people, far more so to a
civilized and Christian country," says a fourth ; and
so through the majority of the Press. And well do
the facts brought to light deserve all the indignation
which can be poured on them, for nothing like them,
we believe, were ever to be found elsewhere in the
world.

However justly it excites the public indignation,
it is no novelty. Men, now advanced in life, went
into the pit when they were children. Thus " Richard
Baker, aged forty-six, went into the pit at five years
old," that is forty-one years ago. Thus "John Gor-
don, aged thirty-four, commenced under-ground
work at seven years of age ; thinks there is
little difference at which lads have begun
in his childhood and since." Several gentlemen
were examined, who have knoWn the collieries all
their lives, and none of them assign any date to the
commencement of the practice of employing children
in mines ; but, on the contrary, they all speak of it
as a practice of which they do not remember the
origin. More than thirty years ago we saw children,
not above eight or ten years of age, working naked in
a coal mine in the West of England. The terrible
and cruel practice, therefore, is not a modern innova-
tion, not one of those changes in good old customs
which have been wrought by the progress of know..
ledge, and the influence of a cheap Press.
Why the rich coalowners, who can control all the
operations of their lessees, who are not ashamed of
inordinate gains obtained by the labour of these poor
infants, have not put a stop to such practices, we
know not, but we know they are much to blame for
having suffered them. In general they belong, we
believe, to the class of landowners, and according to
the theory of the Constitution, receive their ample
wealth for the protectionof the people; but the experi-
ence of our time has demonstrated that, when the
question is to increase their revenue, that class of
men care nothing for the interests of the labouring
cla-ses. Why also the capitalists, who work the
mines, should not have interfered, is to be explained
on the same principle. When their profit is con-
cerned, humanity must take care of itself. There is
another class, too, especially ordained to take care of
she poor. Why have the clergy of the Church of
England not reported these scenes to the world ? What
have the Bishops and Archdeacons done in their annual
visitations, that they have never discovered these
enormities, and held them up to the reprobation of a
Christian public? They have been, we are afraid, too
closely allied with the capitalists and landowners to
waste a thought on the colliers. Even now, it is pro-
bable that the facts would not have been brought to
light had not some severe attacks on Corn-law land-
lords led to reprisals on cotton-lords, to crimination and
recrimination, to close investigation, and ultimately to
bringing the state of the mining population before the
public.

Now that it is known, journalists and public men,
under the influence of the new and vivid impression,
hasten to require some new and stringent legislation.
If they forget, we cannot, that the classes and the in-
dividuals to whom they appeal have been continually
legislating for the working classes, and, under the
pretext of taking care of them, have brought them
to their present distress and degradation. If they
forget, we cannot, that only a few years have elapsed
since the period when the Legislature vas engaged in
abrogating an immense number of unnecessary penal
laws, and when the opinion was embraced, by the best
and wisest of our statesmen, that it behoved every
man to be cautious how he added to the statute-book.
We have not forgotten, if they have, that lesson of
political science, which teaches that the employ-
ment and the food of the people are amongst the
last things the legislator should lay his hands on.
We, therefore, must at once venture to differ from
our zealous Contemporaries, and express a hope that
the Legislature will not too eagerly, and too rashly
meddle with this very important subject.

We have not heard that the colliers themselves
have complained. They have not appealed to
the Legislature. Though the public have been
ignorant, the colliers have known of their own
condition. They have worn th'e shoe, of the pinch-
ing of which not they, contrary to the proverb,
but somebody else, now complains. They are not
only the supposed sufferers—they are also the actors
in most of the scenes which appear so terrible. With
the exception of a few parish apprentices who are
hound to the pits, the bulk of the infants appear to
children of the colliers themselves, and except that
he apprentices labour many years without payment,
`hey are treated no worse than the children of their

masters. It is proper to quote a few examples of this.
At page 12—
Joseph Ellison, Esq., of Birkenshaw, near Birstal,
iays—" I have been practically acquainted with col-
lieries nearly all my life. I know it as a fact that a
collier, now living, has taken a child of his own, who
was only three years old, into a pit to hurry, 'and when
the child was exhausted, it was carried home, stripped,
and put to bed. This is a rare occurrence, but I can
prove it if required, by undeniable evidence, to have
been a fact." Another witness, John Ibbotson, aged 43,
collier, says, "I have once known a man called Joseph
Cawthrey, who sent a child in at four years of age, and
there are many who go to thrust behind at that time,
and many go at five and six."
A case reported by Dr. Mitchel at page 9, the " collier
immediately said my boy is only a little more than
four." At page 11, John Fisher, collier, " has two sons
down the pit, one seven, and the other eight. The one
seven years old has worked three quarters of a year." At
page 14, Joseph Gledhill, banksman: "I have three sons
living, one of them went into the pit when he was
three years old, and commenced working regularly as a
harrier, when he was between five and six." At page
16, Richard Barker, a labouring collier, "has four sons,
who all went in under six years of age." Edmund
Stanley, another collier, sent in his boy between six and
seven. So in the West of Scotland, Mr. Tawse states as
" a child being in the pit enables her father to earn more
tban he otherwise would, he is induced not only to take
him down but to bring down another younger, of nine or
ten.”

In the great majority of cases let us impress it on
he reader, they are the children of the colliers who are
loomed to such early toils, and they are doomed to
hem by their own parents. Painful as the observa-

tion may he, it is nevertheless also true, that all the
cruelties we read of, such as driving a pick at a child
to make it move faster, and the Sub-Commissioners
Report abound in instances of cruelty, are inflicted
by colliers on their own offspring or on the offspring
of their neighbours, relations, and fellow workmen.
They are not inflicted by capitalists or landowners, or
by any of the upper classes. What is really wanted,
therefore, is such an improvement of the colliers, as
will make them refuse to doom their infants to
slavery. They are a rude and a hard race, they have
been so, we believe, since the memory of man, and it
would be better to inspire them with motives for
treating their offspring properly, than to take the
control of their children from them by the law.
Our apprehension of legislation is, that we do not
see how it can well meddle with the subject, without
uperseding the parent by the State. Such an ex-
tension of authority, which may be, and probably
must be, followed out in other cases, is full of mis-
e.hief. The colliers are serfs enough already—to take
their children front under their control, would be to
make them more than ever serfs. If the State remove
the children from the parent, it will also be under an
obligation to provide for them, which we hold to be unwise
statesmanship. As much of the hard brutality of
the people is owing to the neglect of their imme-
date superiors, we expect much improvement from
the publication of a Report, which cannot fail to
;halm the owners and workers of mines, and the
clergy of the mining and coal districts, into some
exertions to wipe out the stigma they have contri-
buted to fix on Britain. If they are taught to look
tio help from legislation, they will not redeem their
characters, nor seek to humanize the characters of
the working classes.

We rejoice very much to see that the men of Not-
toglutin will not be parties to the disgraceful com-
protvises by which they were to be made over to the
Corruptionists. They will be neither Mr. WALTER'S
nor Sir G. 11. LARPENT'S purchased slaves. Success
to their struggle for independence! We hope that
they will return the amiable, the humane, the en-
lightened JOSEPH STURGE, by a large majority.

• IN .'. i 4, )f
cl. ' ''... '.
'-;:".*, ',,
:z If - , ,W. ,:t.... L-,,,!15.
~ 1, ~. 0
% I:::frajoilZl., :a , ''' ,• .. !\tt ,
"' v--,. ,•-•_:* , ~,' oczy-r-eret, 46/-1.