The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-03-26 00:00:00

TUESDAY MORNING, MARCH 26, 1844.

On Monday evening the House of Com-
mons came to a decision, upon the subject of
factory labour, worthy of a Christian legislature and
a Christian nation. It declared that there should be
a point beyond which manufacturing avarice should
not barter the health, the morals, and the lives of
the children of our poor, for gold. It limited in
fine, the hours of labour in factories for children,
male and female, between the ages of nine and thir-
teen, and for adult women, to ten working hours a
day. Yet—alas !—scarcely has the news of this
deed of humanity and justice reached the ears of
the oppressed working people of Great Britain,—
scarcely has time been afforded for the universal
outpouring of gratitude which it had excited ;
scarcely have the toilworn factory children had time
to indulge in grateful anticipations of the boon so
unexpectedly offered to it, than by the same House
of Commons, the cup of promised happiness is
dashed from their lips, and the poor factory workers
are doomed once more to their old slavery—to the
slow torture of those long and dreary hours of toil,
which wither the youthful frame, and crush even
the adult to premature senility and an early grave.
And this—we blush as we record the fact—at the
request, nay at the entreaty of a Conservative Ad-
ministration !

Yes, we blush to record the fact, that to the ob-
stinate perseverance of her Majesty's Conservative
Ministry is entirely to be attributed the temporary
failure of a wise and benificient effort to alleviate
the toil of the children of our working population,
and to restore woman in those districts to the duties
and the comforts of the domestic hearth. We de-
plore this unfortunate course of action, for Sir
Robert Peel's sake, and for that of the great in-
terests and institutions committed to his keeping,
far more than for the sake of the measure which
has been temporarily obstructed; for no power on
earth can prevent the ultimate success of that mea-
sure. The people of England—the right-hearted
and just people of England—have willed that the
fetters shall be struck from the limbs of infancy ;
that distorted frames, emaciated and rayless features,
and minds barren of good, if not deeply impregnated
with evil, shall no longer be characteristic of the
producers of England's wealth. The voice of the
church had nobly seconded the voice of an aroused
people. A majority of the legislature had yielded
with deference to demands so authoritatively urged
—had laid aside for a time the jargon of the political
economist and philosopher, and listened to the
voice of the poor pleading for health and for life.
Here there was an opportunity for a minister to win
the love, the veneration of a grateful people ! Here
was an opportunity of cementing together the
affections of rich and poor, and of sheaving
that the interests and the prayers of the meanest
are not beneath the notice of the legislature! Here
was an opportunity of leading the masses of the
manufacturing districts, from the wilds of chartism
and the mazes of imposture and infidel republican-
ism, to the foot of the throne, and teaching them to
look up for protection to the legislature, and not the
incendiary agitator, and for advice and solace in
affliction to the church of their fatherland, and not
to the novelties of fanaticism and the ever-varying
doctrines of the conventicle.

Yet such an opportunity Sir Robert Peel and Sir
James Graham have resolutely and blindly thrown
away; for we take it for granted, after the virtual defeat
which they sustained on Friday last, and their con-
tinued opposition to the counter proposition of Lord
Ashley, that legislation upon the question will be
abandoned by them altogether. They have crushed
the excited hopes, and rejected the proffered affec-
tions and reverence, of hundreds of thousands of
the most toilworn and the most oppressed of the
working population of Great Britain; and to conci-
liate whom? The " liberal" millocrats of the Anti-
Corn-law League—the Cobdens and the Brights
of the House of Commons—the Marshalls, the
Brookses, and the Potters of the manufacturing
districts ;—to gain a hollow support from a party
who fear far less the consequences to themselves of
the adoption by Sir Robert Peel of a just policy
towards the labouring classes, than they chuckle to
see that statesman assume a policy towards those
classes which is calculated to sink him fearfully
from the lofty position which he has hitherto occu-
pied, and to strike from around his Government
the strongest supports which a Government can
have—the confidence and love of a grateful people.
We will not insult our readers by noticing the
arguments with which Sir Robert Peel and Sir
James Graham attempt to justify their refusal to
concede the boon sought by Lord Ashley and so
yast a portion of the most influential supporters of
lYlinisters, on behalf of the factory population. We
know those arguments to be unsound—the fears put
forward absurdly exaggerated ;. but we shall not be
guilty of the mockery of refuting either. The
puestion involved is no longer one of mere political
economy—not one to be decided by the sophistries
f)if Malthus or M`Culloch—not one with respect to
which Chambers of Commerce or Anti-Corn-law
Leagues are entitled to dictate oracularly. It is