The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-03-05 00:00:00

DUPLICITY 'OE THE COTTON LORDS.

(From the Morning Herald.)
'During the discussion on the factory bill, an attempt
'Was made (as a matter of course !) to connect the hor-
rors of the factory system, with the corn law's, as their
cause. Mr. Baines was the author bi this attempt ;
and he acquitted himself as clumsily as he is wont to
do on all occasions.

" He would only flir4r say, that in legislAing with re-
gard to the owuers of factories, they iihigt lkar in mind that
there was one mode by which the nuinbet of the hours of la-
bour might be considerably diminished—namely, by making
food more cheap—(hearz hesnr—in reality, by repealing the
taxes on food. Then, -instead of having children employed
for twelve hours .a day, they might very well be employed
only ten hours a day ; and the operation would not. apply to
children only, but would apply to adults, and he hoped the
noble lord opposite (Lord Ashley) would turn his attention
to this subject in the course of the legislation he was pursu-
lag with respect to the factory children. Let him he a/lowed
with all gravity—(a laugh)—to say, thatinthe mandfactories
of the continent, neither children nor, adults were restrained
from working any number of hours -in the 'day which they
and their masters might think proper. Was it not, or at
least might it not, become a ..rievoin hardship on the manu-
facturers of this country, to finpose upon them the necessity
of paying a high price for their bread—(cries of " question" ).
He hoped he was speaking to the question—(hear, hear).
The observation he 'was making was, that if they imposed on
the manufacturers of this country such restraints as would
banish those manufactures in which this country had so touch
flourished, what, he would ask, was to become of the landed
interest ? Let them look at the situation in which they would
be placed. The manufacturer of tkis country was compelled
to eat food at sixty or seventy per cent. higherthanthelood
of:the manufacturer of the continent; and, in the second
place, we restricted the hours of labour, so that persons were
employed on the continent frequently at the rate of twenty
per cent. per day beyond the time during which the English
manufacturer was permitted to work."

Mr. Baines happens to be a reasoner of the Joseph
Hume stamp—a person, in short, with a considerable
stock of cunning and certain habits of laborious appli-
cation—yet a person, all the while, utterly incapable of
comprehending a train of reasoning to the slightest
extent subtle in its character, or comprehensive in its
range. When such persons, therefore, happen to be
worth notice at all, (as may, sometimes, prove to be
the case when they thrust themselves in the midst of
important discussions) it is well, instead of wasting
upon them arguments which they lack capacity to fa-
thom, to permit them to answer themselves. With
this bject, we have quoted the preceding very stupid
sentences, as they fell from the lips of Mr. Baines.
Mr. Baines lays it down as a truth of the first or-
der, that the miseries of factory children are caused by
the corn laws. "It is," exclaims the enlightened
member for Leeds, "because English wheat is dears
that the millowners of England are compelled to work
the operatives in their employment for an unnatural
period during each day."
This is the broad proposiiion laid down by Mr.
Baines. Yet this broad proposition is immediately af-
terwards refuted by its author ! For, on the conti-
nent, corn is cheap, when compared with English corn ;
and yet, throughout the continent, Mr. Baines tells us,
in express terms, that the operatives are worked "fre-
quently at the rate of 20 per cent per day beyond the
time during which the English manufacturer is permitted
to work."

A repeal of the corn laws, as the free traders tell us,
would have the effect of placing our manufacturers on
the same level of advantage with the manufacturers of
the continent. The manufacturing operatives of the
continent, have the " cheap food," which our manu-
facturing capitalists desire to introduce into this coun-
try—yet, along with this " cheap food," which, accor-
ding to the enemies of English agriculture, is to im-
prove the condition of the labouring poor of England,
a greatly increased amount of daily toil is the portion
of the'continental operative. Where art English fac-
tory operative works fifteen hours a-day, a continental
factory operative (on the authority of the unconscious
Mr. Baines) works eighteen. And to this increase of
toil, the benevolent Mr. Baines points, as to the means
of improving the English operative's condition
If, in short, the dearness of food were the cause '(as
Mr. Baines originally declared it to be) of the unnatu-
ral amount of toil to which our factory operatives are
subjected, then would it follow of necessity, that in
countries where food is cheap, such frightful slavery
would have no existence. But food is "cheap" on the
continent—yet there, the toil of factory slaves is more
intense than in England. Therefore, dear food in Eng-
land is not the cause of factory slavery in England ;
and out of Mr. Baines's own mouth is Mr. Baines un-
hesitatingly condemned.

The Cant which Mr. Baines and men of his stamp
perpetually utter in reference to the alleged crippling
effects of the corn laws on British manufactures is of
the most disgusting character. It can never be suffi-
cient, let us observe, for the millowners to point to the
wretched condition of their factory slaves, as conclu-
sive proof of the operation of the corn laws. No. They
must go far beyond this point. They must bring their
own immense profit into the account—not the profits
of two unlucky years—but those regularly accruing
profits, which, in their steady accumulation, have within
these thirty or forty years, raised the members of the
Manchester Chamber of Commerce to a level of opu-
lence (according to their organs) with the peerage of
Great Britain.

In trying to estimate the effect of the corn laws on
our manufacturing system, we must take into account,
we repeat, manufacturing profits, as well as the wages
earned by the factory slaves ;—and if we find that
wages are miserably low, whilst profits are, on the ave-
rage of years, extravagantly high, we may rest assured
that the corn laws are not the cause of wretchedness
to the operatives in factories. The corn laws must affect
equally profits and wages. !Me corn laws, therefore,
could never expend their force in elevating the mill-
owners, on the one hand, to the state of princes—and,
on the other, in depressing the labourers in these naills, to
a state of misery disgraceful to a civilised country. No :
other influences than the influences of the corn laws
must be at work to render our manufacturing system a
source of unbounded wealth to the millowner, and of
unbounded abasement to the operative. Those other in-
fluerfces, we have often pointed out. They are gene-
rated by the use of untaxed machinery ;—and so long
as manufacturing capitalists shall be permitted by the
legislature to lower, through the employment of.un-
taxed mechanical means of production, the value of
English labour, in order that they may be enabled to
meet the necessities of a perpetually-extending foreign
commerce—a commerce depending more and more
every year, on returns from poorer and poorer nations
in every corner of the world—so long will all attempts
to remove the horrors of our factory system prove un-
availing. Those horrors spring, we repeat. from the
use of untaxed machinery. Untaxed machinery robs
the labourer of the fair reward of his toil, and adds
most unjustly to the manufacturing capitalist's profits.
Untaxed machinery is, at every moment, robbing the
English farmer of profitable markets—and English
landowners of immense revenues ! From this cause
spring nearly all the social anomalies that meet our
eyes ;—farmers toiling for the smallest returns—land-
owners receiving miserable returns upon their invest-
ments—exporting manufacturers boasting of princely
wealth, and exulting in the consciousness that their
capital "owes no allegiance to the soil of England"—
and, at the same moment, immense masses of opera-
tives, sinking deeper and deeper into a state of hopeless
and incurable poverty !