Star.
London, England, 1818-04-02 00:00:00

ha* no Inclination towards an particular principle
or practice but what an honest love of truth directs.
Under these circumstances, allow me to assure yoti,
my firm conviction is, that our present practices are
destructive of every thing which deserves the name
of comfort or happiness among our work people,
and therefore inconsistent with common humanity
towards them—that they are most ruinous to the
best interests of our country, and ten times more
powerful opponents to our success as manufacturers,
than all the competition which it is possible for fo-
reign nations to create against us.
We complain of the wretchedness of our work-
people—and yet we work them, from infancy to old
age, in such a manner, and under such circumstances,
that, whatever wages they receive, the mass of them
must be wretched.
We complain that all markets are overstocked
with our manufactures—and yet we compel our
young children, and millions of adults, to labour'
almost day and night, to urge forward perpetually
increasing mechanical powers, that those markets
may be still more overstocked.
We complain that numbers of our strong7healthy,
And active labourers, are unemployed—,and yet we
prematurely employ children—infants almost—and
greatly overwork a large part of our population, as
if it were purposely to keep those out of employment
who ought to work, and to whom employment would
be of the greatest individual and national advantage.
We complain that the poor-rates are become an
evil so alarming, that if they continue to go on un-
checked, they threaten to shake the foundation of
civil society ; and yet we leave the mass of our popu-
lation in ignorance, suffer their health and morals to
be undermined in childhood—destroyed in manhood
—and subject them to premature helpless old age ;
thereby taking the most effectual means to compel
our working classes to resort to the poor laws, as
their sole inheritance, and thus accelerate the most
formidable evil, that ever yet, from within, assailed

a civilized community.
We complain that foreign raw materials are extra-
vagantly high, yielding the cultivator an enormous
profit, and that the articles we manufacture from
them, by the over-wrought exertions of our men,
women, and children, under every deprivation of
natural comfort, and aided by unrivalled and almost
' perpetually moving mechanism, will not enable us
to give a bare subsistence to these wretched beings—
and yet by our long hours of labour, we take every'
means in our power to increase the price of the fo-
reign raw material, and to diminish the profit on the
articles we manufacture. Such is the blind igno-
rance of our conduct, that I am compelled to ask,
where is the boasted intellect of the British Isles

To those who can comprehend and steadily trace
the rise, progress, and consequences of the manufac-
turing system, it is evident that it has given birth to
circumstances, which train men to think it their pro-
per business and duty, technically speaking, to take
a fair advantage of all their fellows, and to sacrifice
their own happiness, and the well-being of society,
at the shrine of individual gain • although by such
practices the most favoured of them obtain only the
shadow of their wishes, while, by their overstrained
exertions, in a wrong direction, the substance of their
desires is removed to a greater and a greater distance
from their grasp.
Let us, my friends, now no longer proceed thus ;
let us stand still and examine the wisdom of those
practices so dear to some of us—namely, the prema-
ture employment of children, and the exaction of
excessive labour from a part of our adult population,
while thousands are wholly unemployed, and mise-
rable, and starving, for want of occupation. A very
limited share of sagacity, properly directed, will shew
us that, in our character of manufacturers only, it is
clearly our interest to permit children to be properly
educated, and to possess sound and vigorous consti-
tutions ;—that our operatives, and all the working
classes should not be asked or permitted to labour
more than twelve hours per day, with two hours in-
termission, for rest, air, and meals ; and that, in re-
turn for their labour, they should be allowed wages
sufficient to enable them to purchase wholesome food,
and some of the most useful articles of manufacture.
View these changes in the most unfavourable light
in which they can be placed for the manufacturing
interest, and they will be found, each and all of them,
to be beneficial to it. Should the non-employment
of children, under twelve years of age, and the limi-
tation of the hours of labour to twelve, inclusive
of meals, occasion a small fractional addition to the
prime cost of our manufactured articles, by the con-
sequent diminution of the supply, yet as the latter
now exceeds the demand, the prices of the articles
will advance in a greater proportion, and the con-
sumer, as h • ought, will make up the difference.—
But any difference that may thus arise must be small
indeed, compared to the perpetual fluctuations which
are made in the prices of all articles, by a few wealthy
speculators buying up at once immense quantities of
the raw materials, from which the various articles of
commerce are made. In the cotton business, for in-
stance, as being now the most extended, (but the
principle applies equally to all), the ameliorations
proposed will not affect the prime cost of the thread
more than the fraction of a penny per pound, and
the finished cloth or muslin, not more than a fraction
of that fraction per yard—while such speculations
will increase the prime cost of the raw material from
I d. to 12d. or 18d. per pound—and that to benefit a
very few individuals at the expense of the public. 1
find no fault with such speculations—but it does not
become those who are the most active in them, and
the chief gainers by them, to contend against the re-
moval of evils which affect the well being and vital
interests of millions of the most helpless of the popu-
lation, merely on the plea that a small fractional ad-
dition would thereby be made to the prime cost of an
article—when for their own immediate gain they
would add 10 or 20 times the amount to its price.
In short, my friends, when you come to examine
the subject fairly and honestly, you will certainly find
that no valid reason exists for the longer continuance
of the grievous and pernicious practices which now
prevail in our trade; and that, instead of opposing
them, it is especially our interest, one and all, to pew
tion the legislature to remove them without delay
and I trust that when you have dispassionately,
without prejudice, taken all these circumstances into
your consideration, you will accordingly pour in pe-
titions from every district in which manufactures are
establiiired. aOraLAT owls.
14w Lam...as, Maw; act, 1818.