The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1843-05-02 00:00:00

fat Eibtrpool attanZiarb.

TUESDAY MORNING, MAY 2, 1843.

It would be a circumstance truly humiliating to our
human nature, if it should turn out that the storm of
dissenting opposition, which has been directed osten-
sibly against the educational clauses of the proposed
factory bill, has had its leading source in hostility to
the limitation of the hours of infant labour contained
in that bill ; if the fears which have been so plausibly
put forth, of the consciences of little factory children
being oppressed by the iniquity of the Church of Eng-
land Catechism, have not been prompted by the greater
fear that such children were about to be emancipated
from the bondage of that tyrant, capital, and the cruel
selfishness of inhuman parents, which at this moment
are, together, wearing into soulless and fleshless ana-
tomies, or degrading into reckless criminals, so many
thousands of the children of the working classes. And
yet it is too'inuch to be feared that such a feeling has
been uppermost in the minds of the prime movers in
this demonstration. Sincere as may have been the
convictions and the motives of many, who have since
plunged themselves into it, we greatly suspect that
if the hearts of those who pulled the wires and set the
puppets in motion, could be searched, too much of
MAMMON would be discovered there—too much of
griping selfishness—to allow of our entertaining any
longer a doubt that the question of education is not so
much a religious, or even a sectarian question, as it
is a question of the pocket—a struggle between selfish
avarice] on the one hand and christian philanthropy
on the other.

That such is the case, in the immediate districts af-
fected by Sir James Graham's' bill, can scarcely be
doubted by any one who has closely watched the pro-
gress of public opinion, there, upon the subject. Let
us glance at a few evidences, as to this fact, which
have crept out during the past week in the neighbour-
ing manufacturing metropolis—Manchester. It has
pleased that very sapient body, the town council of the
" metropolis" in question, to hold a special meeting to
exhibit its wisdom in opposition to the bill, from the
proceedings at which we take leave to cull the follow-
ing morceau

One of the members, a cotton spinner, as reported
in the Guardian, stated that " he should be glad to see
education promoted either by this or any other bill;
but he thought this bill would be a failure, inasmuch
as it would have the effect of inducing masters to turn
children under 13 years of age out of employment."
Why would the bill have such effect ? why turn
children under thirteen years out of employment ?
Because children are to be educated upon this, or that,
or any system ? Not at all; but because masters will
in future be permitted to work such children only six
hours and a-half per day ! Clearly it is not the educa-
tional clauses, but the limitation of the hours, which
are here excepted against ; and when Mr. Alderman
Murray tells us, therefore, that " he should be glad to
see education promoted either by this or any other
bill," we must take leave greatly to doubt his sincerity,
unless some system can be hit upon by which children
can be at school and at work at the same time.

Another gentleman, a manufacturer, at the same
meeting of collective wisdom, informs us that " he be-
lieved the effect of the present bill would be to turn
children under thirteen Years of age out of the factories
into the streets, and then there would be no provision
at all for their education." Again we ask, why turn
them into the streets ? Are millowners Christian men ?
Are children who can read their Bible and say their
prayers unfitted for the meridian of a cotton-mill ?
Not at all ; but they cannot be worked the long hours of
adult labour.

But what followed from this pattern of manufac-
turing morality is still more worthy of admiration.
This same personage " believed it was intended to
throw the maintenance of children upon their parents
for three or four years longer"—a circumstance cer-
tainly not to be deplored if we had, as the result, their
training in a healthier system of religion and morality.
We can see nothing to be admired in a system by
which parents increase and multiply juvenile " ma-
chines" rather than the germs of a future generation
of thristian men and women. He also regretted this
operation of the bill, however, because it would " pre-
vent children contracting early marriages (!) It was,
therefore, calculated to PRESS VERY HEAVILY UPON
THE POOR (!)" Strange objection to the bill, this !
It will prevent children under thirteen years of age
getting married ! We couldn't wish it to do a better
thing, though we can scarcely see how this admirer of
early marriages can trace such to be its operation.
At a meeting of the inhabitants of Salford upon the
same subject, we find another gentleman, of whom we
never heard before, stating that " he had been told by
a manufacturer that the effect of the bill would be to
throw 20,000 children out of employment ; and that,
in order to avoid the necessity of employing older
and giving higher wages"—is this the sore point after
all ?—" the manufacturers were fitting up machinery to
supersede manual labour !" Can there be much plainer
speaking than this, as to the real objection to the bill.
It rescues the demoralised factory infant from his phy-
sical slavery and his moral degradation ! There is no-
thing of sectarian objection here ; no objection to
Church of England trustees, or Church of England
Catechisms; but a very perceptible objection to paying
adult men and women for the unnatural toil extracted
from the life-blood of children.

Most emphatically we must express our conviction
that this latter gentleman libels, in this assertion, the
great majority of the manufacturing body. They are
surely not prepared to commit an outrage to decency
so gross as would be the discharge from their employ-
ment of the whole of their juvenile population, because
the legislature has declared that they shall be edu-
cated, and they shall not he over-worked ! If such be
the case, the world can have little respect for their own
morality, or their " liberal" professions of care for the
welfare of those classes which Providence has thrown
into dependence upon them.