The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-09-28 00:00:00

FACTORY CHILDREN.

A. very few passages of evidence will best explain the deep
obligation of good men to the earnest and holy energy with
which Lord Ashley has for years continued the good tight in
defence of the infant slaves of white complexion, whose
wrongs and sufferings move no sympathy because they are
near home, and form no passport to liberal subscriptions.
We are the more induced to publish the subjoined passages,
as they afford a criterion by which to try the sincerity of those
gentlemen, who go so rapidly up and down the country
striving to bring ruin upon the whole agricultural body, under
pretence of tenderness for the poor. It will be well, wherever
these artists next appear, to put to them the question whe-
ther charity with them, which seems to travel so far, has
first begun at home? British feeling, we know, is somewhat
warm, sometimes restive, and in its indignation still is honest;
from which we infer that the question, if not agreeable, will
at least be very useful. We now supply extracts from the
evidence taken on the factory commission, and from the
mouth of one of Mr. Marshall's operatives :
"I am thirteen years old. I began to work at Mr. Mar-
shall's flax-mill when I was near eight years old. We worked
from six in the morning to seven at night. We had forty
minutes allowed for dinner. We had no allowance for break-
fast or afternoon drinking. I was very much tired and fa-
tigued. As soon as I went home I fell asleep directly. We
were not allowed to sit down at the mill during the whole
day I! ! It we did we should be beaten !!! It is a common
thing for children to be beaten !!! I had a sister who worked
at Mr. Marshall's, and she got killed there."
Jonathan Downe, in his evidence before the same commie-
sion,_says—

" It is the usual practice to prepare mills previous to their
inspection by strangers. It is a frequent thing at Mr. Mar-
shall's mill, where the least children are employed—provided
a child should be drowsy, the overlooker walks round the
room with a stick in his hand, and he touches that child on
the shoulder, and says, ' Come here.' In the corner of the
room there is an iron cistern ; it is filled with water; he takes
the boy up by the legs and dips him overhead in the cistern,
and sends him to his work for the remainder of the day,
and that boy is to stand, dripping as he is, at his work I
lie has no chance of drying himself. We have a vast number
of cripples, many from standing too long.
Again, Mark Best, an overlooker, gives the following
evidence :

" The regular hours for work are from six to seven. When
they are ' throng,' from five to nine at night ! They only
allow forty minutes at dinner ! No time is allowed for
breakfast or drinking. The children put the food on one
side, and eat it as they can. Sometimes, when the work is bad,
they are prevented from getting it at all; they have then to
take it home again. Sometimes it is so dirted that it is
rendered unfit to eat. The dust flies about till they can
scarcely see each other. In the card-rooms the refuse hangs
about their mouths while they are eating their food. * *
The masters know very well the children are thus beaten and
strapped ; they encourage the overlookers to do it. The
straps are about afc.ot and a half long, and there is a stick at
the end of some of them • and the end of the strap they
beat them with is cut or slit into five or six thongs. They
are regularly made for the purpose!!
So that Manchester machinery is not complete without a
machine for thrashing children!
The Sabbath-day—the only day these poor, helpless, suf-
fering, ill-used, and oppressed infants have whereon to rest
their strained and aching limbs, is thus described by a factory
boy, William Dodd .
" Even Sunday—that day of rest to the weary and op-
pressed—shone no sabbath-day for me ; for, although I was
no longer urged on and kept in motion by the fear of the
strap and the billy-roller, yet the leisure thus afforded to
think and to reflect upon my situation only made me more
miserable ! If Sunday was very bad, Monday morning was
worse still—it was horrible ! Even now it makes me trem-
ble to think upon the sufferings of those mornings ! My
joints were then like so many rusty hinges that had lain by
for years : I had to get up an hour earlier, and, with the
broom under one arm as a crutch, and a stick in my hand,
walk over the house till I had got my joints in working order,
and this day of the week was generally the most painful of
the seven.
Let any honest man now take the case home to himself,
and just, imagine that this was the lot of his own child—as it
may be, for aught he knows, that of his grandchild—and then
he will understand, and we very much mistake if he du not
second, the exertions of Lord Ashley.

HEARNE v. STOWELL.—This case of libel, which has
attracted so much attention in the Roman Catholic world,
has been postponed, for further consideration, until next
November.
SELKIRKSHIRE.—We have much pleasure in stating that
Alexander Pringle, Esq., one of the Lords of the Tressury.
was, on Tuesday, again elected member for this county with-
out opposition.

_
In consequence of the failure of Messrs. Hobhouse and
Co., of Bath, Mr. H. Hobhouse, the whig Member for
Hereford, has determinad to accept the Chiltern Hundreds.
There ►ill be a contest, with the best chance for a conser-
vative.

A magnificent volcano, 12,400 feet above the level of the
sea, vomiting flame and smoke, was discovered in the South
Seas on the 27th of January last, by
H.M.S. Erebns ; it re-
ceived the name of Mount Erebus, and is in lat. 77. 32. S.
and long. 167.0. E.

Edward Liddle, the paper pellet and coarse gunpowder
man, who was eharged with attempting to murder Lord
Howick at Sunderland, has been fined J..!5 for an assault, and
bound over to keep the peace. It seems that the mob pelted
his house (and he says a stone hit him on the bead before he
letifly the pellets.)
THE MVEDBR Iti. Easrcur AP.—Rexlcy the murderer,
has not yet been apprehnnile4, and the opinion gains ground
that he has drowned hiaaseif in the Thames. He was -traced
to the lower stairs where all trace of him was lost. His Wife
is not expected to survive.
accidentlaalte—buqiisa'it
manager of the Thames
si.rsT;gcliuoolfml
•sa DEATH FROM TIII: BURSTING OF A GUN.
'id in his hand. Ile was found by a person
wma.ainaP
killed by the
dpgun ytwhich
rci
klu,,,,cci,phdal el
in the 33111 e employ, and the contents of the gun entered tue
forehead of the deceased
, who lingered twelve days after the
accident.

But in order that he may form some idea what Sir Robert's
intentions are, I will give him acme idea what they are not.
He will not squander a mint of money by commissioning 13
vessels to provide for his relatives and dependents. He will
not sent out individuals afflicted with palpitations to settle
affairs in China. He will not send Durham mustard to cool
dissentions in Canada. He will not give a premium to the
Brazilian slave growing sugar planter (at the expense of our
colonies) to suppress the slave trade. He will not encourage
the Baltic timber trade to the exclusion of the Canadian. He
will not take the postage rate off the rich merchant and levy
it at an increased rate of 10 per cent. on the taxes of the la-
bourer. And finally, he will not, to enable the manufacturer
to reduce his rate of wages, destroy the main stay (the agri-
cultural interests of the three kingdoms) by the encourage-
ment of foreign corn growers.—Yours, most respectively,
Bootle. R. W. B.

STIPENDIARY MAGISTRATES-PRESENT GRIEV-
ANCES AND SUGGESTED REMEDIES.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD,

SlR,—The short interim which will intervene between the
present date and the Ist of November next, renders it impe-
rative on every conscientious voter to consider how far be
can best exercise the right of returning members to the com-
mon council who are " elected by and are resnonsible to the
people," according to the maxima taught him by our late
very worthy reformers, in the municipal struggle to come.
It was a great mistake of our liberal friends, that the coun-
cillors were " responsible to the people." It is true they
were elected by the people. but their long lease of office has
not manifested any of that responsibility ; and if it is appa-
rent they were altogether irresponsible to them from the
first, it will behove the people to take care bow far their
statements or promises are to be trusted prior to an election
for the future.
Some of the " doings

of the first reform councillor.

their appointment of oFficers, their economy in expenditure,
their arrangements for the education of the children of the
poor, and, above all, their responsibility to the people—were
trumpeted forth in the council chamber by the celebrated
Mr. Walmsley at the close of their first year's labours; and
his speech on that memorable occasion was printed and re-
trumpeted by the Reform Association. Alas ! how differ-
ently does that address read now ! Where are now their
uninterested immaculate officers ? How far now are the
children of the poor educated in advance of their immediate
predecessors ? Their wise economy,—where is it ? Above
all, where are the people to seek responsibility for all their
past errors ? Where is, or has been, their responsibility to
the people ?
If opportunity permit, and your indulgent 'columns find
space enough, I may advert to one or two of their cardinal
doings, which, intended for public benefits, have become
public grievances ; but on another occasion. At present a
few words more respecting stipendiary magistrates, and the
Solomon-like arrangements of our Police-court, may bespeak
attention and beget reflection to many other things ; for
which, if felt to be hurtful or oppressive, the people, although
they may find their introducers certainly irresponsible, can
as certainly find remedies, in the personS of their conserva-
tive successors.

What profound wisdom is embodied in the system of
lining ! especially where fining saves some thousands per
annum from the corporate funds for magistrates' and magi-
strates' clerks' salaries. What a saving of bribery would it
have effected in the days of Felix and his contemporaries the
stipendiaries of those days! Used as a substitute for any
other punishment, five pounds for an assault from a wealthy
offender is a merciful one ; but merciful as it is, and service-
able too as it regards the ends of justice and the interests of
the public, it has another advantage, which is this—it tends
as much to the keeping up of " gentlerhanly assaults " as
the letting a hen partridge escape tends to keep up the breed
of partridges !
In reverse cases it has similar advantages—visiting the sins
of the fathers upon the children, and making (as the Unita-
rians say it should) very obedient husbands. Added to these,
it makes an oath a less serious thing to a witness than it
used to be, and leaves defendants very little to say for them-
selves; but its crowning advantage is, that it never presup-
poses capacity or incapacity for reformation! Can anything
be more desirable ?

For instance, a Protestant workman is surrounded every
day by Roman Catholic fellow-workmen, who, regarding
him with the favour they would bear to a pestilence, resort
to every means of annoying him. Every invention to tor-
ment him is used from time to time. Fancy him in the
workshop some morning scalded with hot coffee while at
breakfast by a fellow-workman, and retaliating the insult by
a blow ; and then fancy the sufferer summonsing the striker
before a stipendiary magistrate, and proving by some of the
other workmen an assault—the stipendiary magistrate sym-
pathising with the complainant—fining the offender about
the amount of three weeks' wages " and expenses"—the de-
fendant's starving wife and family durine those three weeks,
—and an idea may be formed how doubtful cases may be
simplified and multiplied ; how it is not exactly necessary for
a witness to see prior provocation to an assault, so much as
to see the assault itself ; and how retaliation may be rendered
aggression under this admirable system, which for the most
part the foolish old tories never thought of in cases such as
these, or would have dismissed in spite of the evidence.
Suppose another case, (which would to God only existed
in supposition !) where a thoughtless wife, from a feeling of
jealousy or offended pride, or from any other feeling, had an
inclination to be separated from ber husband. What an easy
course does the fining system offer for the accomplishment
of her purpose How easy for her to provide some unprin-
cipled friend or relative, in ambush, as evidence for her hav-
ing been ill used ! Let us in particular select a case, which,
if it did not, might have happened during the liberal dynasty.
An unprincipled mother and bribed servant girl are kept in
a separate room to bear witness to an event which a wife
wishes to bring about. The wife instantly commences a
quarrel with her husband by charging him with some un-
committed cruelty to her, and, to facilitate her purpose,
works herself into a violent passion; latterly, with a view to
snore irresistible provocation, raises some dangerous'weapon
to strike him with—attempts perhaps to cut him with a knife,
or, after a javelin manner, throw some sharp instrument in
his face. Is it to be wondered at, that, under such circum-
stances, a blow should be struck ? Suppose a blow to be
struck in earnest ; well, at this juncture the witnesses come
in ; they are not in time to see the weapon raised, the knife
aimed, or the instrument thrown, but they are careful to
arrive quite in time to ruin the husband's reputation by
swearing that they saw him Strike his wife. The testimony
of such witnesses, even in the absence of marks of violence
on the complainant, is received as good evidence by the ma-
gistrate, who fines the defendant in a heavy sum, binds him
over for his good behaviour, and the latter is compelled ul•
timately to pay his wife an allowance for her separate main-
tenance, has a stab to his reputation and feelings, and may
live to see the effects of a bad example on his children in the
infamy of their mother. It is questionable if a dismissal of
a case like this, or a case like the preceding, on the plea of
a first offence, or any other plea tantamount to a dismissal
under the magistrates of former times, in what they called
critical and uncertain cases, was or was not justice ; but
then it is equally questionable, if the infliction of a fine and
binding over to keep the peace, even in the event of a plea
of first offence, would, as regarded the funds requisite for
the enormous expenses under the new system, have been
prudence or imprudence.
These, we will say, are only supposed cases : should futu.
rity at any time discover them to be facts or not, those ac-
quainted'with the annals of the reform era can best judge.
But not to confine ourselves to supposed cases, let us turn
to actual, every day cases, such as come under the recently
improved fining system, or, that late improvement in the
punishment of poor drunkards, of an imprisonment of three
days in the Borough gaol, when they cannot pay the cus-
tomary fine of five shillings. Truly, this is visiting the sins
of fathers and mothers on their children very severely ! Of
course the imprisonment is never visited on wealthy drunk-
ards, inasmuch as they can always pay the fine ; but the poor
drunkard has only the painful alternative of robbing his
family of several days sustenance by paying their fine, or
leaving them perhaps to starvation for half a week during
his confinement, to answer the ends of what is called justice.
No leniency seems to be shown to first offences, under these
recent improvements. Certainly more fines are paid, and
more cupboards under them ; still the poor drunkards are as
numerous as ever. Showing, that it is as much a fallacy to
suppose fines or imprisonments, without the gift of true re-
pentance, will cure a drunkard, as it is to suppose a child
will learn anything without a capacity. Under the old ma-
gistrates this fallacy did not occupy any apparent promi-
nence, they seemed to know that nothing but saving grace
could avail to reform a drunkard ; from a feeling of com-
passion to his helpless offspring, neither fining nor imprison-
ment made any part of the punishment they awarded him ;
he was admonished and discharged ; and this manner of
disposing cases of drunkenness, it cannot be denied, is the
wisest and best after all.

Having in a former letter urged a few considerations on
the public, respecting stipendiary magistrates, without se-
lecting any of them as a subject for personal animadversion,
and knowing that the STANDARD has already called their
attention to the prevalence of vice and immorality in the
town at present. It is not too much to ask the electors to
weigh well and consider these imperfect statements of mine,
and those statements from abler hands, with reference to
their coming duty : a careful inquiry into these will supply
many things, indispensably deficient in a letter like this.
Into a state of society, offences must and will come; the
world since its beginning has abounded with them, and will
abound with them to its dissolution. False witnesses
abounded in the days of Joseph, David, Solomon, and all
the Prophets, and will abound in the present and succeeding
generations. How careful then ought the magistrates to be
in supplicating for grace to execute justice and to maintain
truth. But in vain will the inhabitants of this borough look
for the undoing of heavy burdens, the letting the oppressed
go free, the bursting of the bands of wickedness, so long as
the judicial bench is unoccupied by Christian magistrates
administering such justice as will be entirely disassoci-
ated with either pecuniary or stipendiary considerations,
in whose election the public has had a voice, in whose quali-
fications they have all an interest : who can in judgment re-
member mercy, knowing that themselves are compassed with
a feeling of the same infirmities, incident to all erring
brothers and sisters.
And this is the remedy I would respectfully propose for the
dissipating of those dark and gathering clouds which over-
spread our local atmosphere; Christian magistrates admi-
nistering Christian laws ; judging the cause of the poor and
needy, and breaking in pieces the oppressor; consulting the
Bible as their chief statute book, and disposing of every dif-
ficult case according to its provisions. Under such magis-
trates truth would again flourish in the earth, and the mouth
of all lies be stopped. For ourselves and our neighbours let
time, us hope we may see such magistrates in due that the
tears of those who have suffered or shall suffer, throw rou h p pression, through any plague or trouble, when theygagoain.
flow forth from their crushed hearts may flow in streams of
gratitude, and be exhaled into an sof glory irradiating a
city which righteousness has exaltedl—l remain
VOUTS, &C.
A CONSERVATIVE.

Sept. 2lth, 1841

rondent
l
e
[Subsequently to the receipt of this letter, our core
has forwarded to us a short explanation, in which
that if any part of his letter seems to convey anysversonasaya,
lity, it is quite unintentional on his part. No person.
apprehend, would reasonably inter chat " A Conservative"we
intends any direspect to stipendiary magistratespersonally,
though he objects to their appointment and the system of
fines.—En. L. S.j

Err. Eel's Or RAILWAY TRAVELLING UPON THE IMAGIN-
ATION.—On Friday, the 17th instant, an old woman took
her fare from Stockport to Manchester by the railway. She,
being a little deaf, (lid not perceive the carriages move, and,
after couversing with her friends a little while, lifting up her
head, sbe exclaimed, " See, yon bridge is flying !" On look-
ing a little to the right hand side of the bridge, she exclaimed
again, with an air of surprise, " Oh, yon things are flying !"
to the amusement of her fellow-passengers.

Lord CLIFFORD said that it was so reported, though he
could not believe they had gone that length.
Lord ELLENBOROUGR said that for 200 years the priests
of Goa had performed the religious duties of the Catholic
church in India, and ultimately a dispute arose between
them and the British Catholic missionaries, who were a few
years back sent from this country. The Supreme Court de-
cided in favour of the priests of Goa, and thus the matter
stood. As to torture, it was unnecessary for him to say that
nothing of the sort had taken place. He regretted the noble
lord had brought the subject forward, for it could only tend
to exasperate feelings in India upon the subject, increasing
the difficulties of the government of India, and doing no ser-
vice to those whose cause he had taken up. There were
some of the papers which he had no objection to produce;
but, as to others of them, he did not know that they were in
existence.

After a few other words in reply from Lord CLIFFORD,
the papers, together with some additional ones on the subject,
moved for by Lord Ellenborough, were then ordered, and
the house adjourned until Monday.