The Sun. — 1846-02-04 (London, England)

THE TEN HOURS' BILL. TO JOHN BRIGHT, ESQ., M.P. Sir,—l have marked your public progress with considerable anxiety and attention. I have joyfully watched you emerge from your privacy at One Ash, to become the Honourable Member for Durham, Since then, I have seen you warmly, zealously, and eloquently plead for the emancipation of Commerce. Your course was rugged—indomitable perseverence hath rendered it comparatively smooth, and you are now on the eve of witnessing our virtuous Queen sign the death warrant of monopoly. Through this you have deservedly earned and won the esteem, admiration. and gratitude of your countrymen. They have beheld a young and earnest pleader of their rights, nervously confront a titled oligarchy, in language rendered doubly beautiful by its intensity of vigour and truthfulness. You have appeared as " the poor man's guardian ;" and helpless intellect—because destitute of worldly wealth— hath silently prayed for you and yours. The pale cheeck of poverty and destitution have hung with unfading hope upon your holy denunciations of wrong and misrule. You have thus created a fair and spotless fame in the brief period of seven years. Why, will you blight it ? You advocate the establishment of mental institutions for working men. But of what avail are they if time is not allowed for the feasting of the mind ? You assert " that a majority of the working classes are not in favour of a Ten-hours' Bill." Fain do I trust that you did not mean it. The vast majority of the operatives in manufacturing districts are heart and soul for the Bill unimpaired. This being the case, who else onght to be asked ? If the tenant-farmers were for unshackled trade in corn, you would hold that alone as sufficient for its repeal. Operative cotton spinners are tenant labourers for millowners, as tenant-farmers are for landowners, and they request a Ten Hours Factory Bill. Will you grant it ? Will it bring suffering ? Hear yourself : "He (Mr. Bright) did believe that many years would not pass by before the operation of the eleven hours' system would become universal. * * * And no one would rejoice more heartily than he should to witness such a state of matters." Why, then, retard, the benign consummation? Sir Robert Peel says, three years before a repeal, and you reply, now ? You say a few years, and then shorter hours of labour,; but the operatives say, " now I" Either procrastination is good or it is not ; and if you will not allow Sir Robert to defer, how can you expect the working-classes to permit you to postpone ? They join you, Sir, and ejaculate, Now ! It is truly painful to witness you sacrifice yourself thus. Whether right or wrong, the feeling will go abroad that you are determined to " protect " your call at all hazards? I incline to the contrary. I attribute your unfortunate support to long and tedious hours of labour, to mistaken views which reflection will cure ; and, to preserve your unblemished reputation, reflect in time. In your speech you say, " On one point we were all agreed, _ that for men to work ten hours was a more comfortable and a more desirable thing than to work twelve,." If, Sir, you are all " agreed " that it is more desirable " , for men to work ten hours instead of twelve, why don't you support the ten hours ? I simplyaosrk. you, why ? I don't wish to " parade" a dish of h ribles, but yet I have seen factory operatives, when leaving their emplopment, jaded, fatigued, and exhausted, and totally incapacitated for intellectual enjoyments. It has appeared as if " Their very pulse of life sto'd still, And nature made a pause."  I wish you, respected Sir, to consider this brief effusion as the spontaneous proNetion of half an hour, and not as a studied or elaborate piece of composition, meant for critical analysis.—l am, Sir, your faithful friend, 3, South-street, Manchester, J, E. Opposite the Free Trade Hall.  MURDERS at the CAPE of