The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1833-01-22 00:00:00

THE LIVERPOOL STANDARD.

much respect to the people as to apprise them of the laws
intended to be imposed, a little before—a very little be-
fore the hammer is upon the rivet. At present our par-
liamentary debates are a gross burlesque upon pophlar
deliberation.—Standard.

sent of free, reformed, and Christian England, for Afri-
can negroas ? It is not unadvisedly that we make the
startling comparison ; nor is it for the purpose of dispa-
raging manufacturing improvements, or discouraging
manufacturing enterprise, that we represent our factories,
whose machinery is worked by children of tender age, in
the same light as West India plantations cultivated by
negro slaves. The similarity is established in almost
every point,—the parallel is drawn in the broadest lines;
and it is only because the same element enters into both,
is only because domestic, white, English slavery is
now proved "byx cloud of witnesses" to exist, that we
call upon the legislature to interfere, and to abate the
rank offence. Children of from six to twelve years of
age, who are driven from their scarcely warmed beds to
the mills before daybreak, and are wrought till they can
no longer stand, or who can only be kept awake at their
task by the application of blows and stripes,—who have
sometimes their bodies maimed, or their lives endangered
by a cruel taskmaster, when invincible fatigue over-
powers the strength of their feeble nature,—who struggle
with scanty and int•ufficient food against the effects of an
unwholesome atmosphere and a torturing position,—who
contract diseases, stunt their growth, and acquire defor-
mities, by an over exertion of their frames,—who are de-
prived of all the opportunities of healthy exercise, and
all the means of moral instruction; so beneficial or neees-
sary for their time of life,--children in this situation, we
say, though sold to the factory by the necessities of their
own parents, as the African chiefs sold their subjects or
captives, are no more free agents than a West Indian
gang, and therefore, for the same reason, ought to be
placed under the special protection of the law. Instances
may occur in the agricultural districts where the young
are equally exposed to physical suffering and moral de-
gradation; cruel parents, in towns and villages which
never saw the smoke of a steam-engine or heard of a cot-
ton-factory, may keep their infants in misery and bond-
age. These cases the law cannot reach without probably
the greater evil of domiciliary visits, but where great
masses of children, as in our manufacturing districts, are
collected into a particular place, and follow a common
occupation, beyond the care of their parents, general
rules can be enforced, and a kind of labour police esta-
blished. We beg that this principle of the absolute un-
deniable slavery of factory children, and this distinction
between them and other children not congregated by the
nature of their employment into masses, may be kept in
, mind in all notions of legislating on this question, as
otherwise we must attempt an impossible task, or effect
a mischievous result. The masters themselves, if their
feelings deserved to be consulted on such a subject, could
not object to this interference with the age at which
children can be allowed to enter their establishments, or
the number of hours which they may be permitted to
work. They cannot pretend, like the West Indian plan-
ter, that the children are their " property," and if they
derive no benefit from their work, they will not be re-
quired to pay for their wages. The parent or the parish
must supply the funds for their sustenance till they can
support themselves ; but, from whatever quarter these
funds come, English humanity must not be further out-
raged by a continuance of the present system of infant
bondage. Dr. Chalmers, as we see in the excellent and
instructive evidence of the Rev. Mr. Gordon, one of the
ministers of Aberdeen, told the Glasgow manufacturers,
from the pulpit, several years ago, " that they regarded
human beings as so many pieces of machinery, and the
living principle within them as the power which set the
machinery in motion, and that their sole object was to
get out of the machines as much work as possible at the
least expense." There could not be a more undeniable or
a more melancholy statement. This infant "machinery"
must now be regulated by those who " regard the living
principle within it" as something different from a mere
mechanical power. There are duties more important
than those of accumulating wealth by whatever means ;
and even the commercial wealth of a nation is bought at
too high a price, if that price be the degradation, the de-
pravity* the suffering of those who produce it. Law must
interfere to check the reckless inhumanity of the avari-
cious, as it does to control or punish any other bad or
selfish passion which seeks its own gratification at the
expense of others.—Times.