The Bee-Hive. — 1872-03-02 (London, England)

WNES INSPECTION ACT.  Fon some years the course of legislation has gone directly contrary to what the so-called "principles of political economy " taught to be the proper thing. The right of individual enterprise to do the best it could for itself in the freedom of trade—buying labour cheap, and selling goods dear—had resulted in a condition of things which could not have endured much longer. In the accumulation of wealth, the economy of humanity itself appeared entirely forgotten. Children were worked and sacrificed in factories, and men, women, and children, in mines for hours, and under circumstances of horror and evil never exceeded in the annals of history. In 1831-2 the Factories Bill, and the Mines Inspection Acts, broke into that system of cruelty, and legal murder, which had been induced, we will admit unintentionally, by the competition of wealth against humanity, man against man, and masters against each other. The employers of labour as a class; and the disciples of the hard and fast economic school opposed all such legislation. as contrary to the principles of political economy, as subversive of the freedom of trader the liberty of the subject, and as dangerous to our national progress and all interests of trade and commerce. And against these protests these Acts passed— while they looked on, we believe, with fear and trembling—expecting to see England's supremacy of trade upset, its wealth diminish ed , its manufactures ruined, and its workers demoralised. But, strange to say, the evils they prophesied did not come to pass. Nay, it was passing Strange that the very reverse followed. From the time of passing these Acts, production has inot:eased, trade has extended, capital has aocumulated, and the workers have had a decided advance in material benefits, and as decided an elevation, both mental and moral. Had the Factories Act not passed, had the impending revolution then looming been tided over, it would have been impossible to have obtained, and impolitic to have seized, the present political suffrages, now quietly worked and advantageously enjoyed, for the national progress, by the great mass of the people.  Various improvements of the said acts in favour of the workers, and, strange to say, not to the ruin or even injury of the employers, have from time to time been introduced, and at last, after years of delay, a real and substantial measure of improvement has been introduced in favour of the mines—in the shape of the new Mines Regulation Bill,  The Aow Bill--under the heads of employment of women, young perilous, and children; wages; workbag, managers, inspection, arbitration; general, special, and miscellaneous rules to be enforced by penalties—is conceived and arranged under a mode and spirit very different to what the old agitators and workers of the previous Acts will well remember. Whereas it used to be, that the promoters of the Inspection Acts and of its improvement used to be treated as demagogues and dangerous innovators; and whereas the tendeney of what they advocated, and the bearing of the things they sought for, were thought to be illegitimate to economic philosophy, and dangerous to the prosperity of the raining investments, thanks to the effort and conduct of the Miners' Union and delegates; thanks to the spirit of the age, and the beneficial results of former experience; and oh, sad to think of it, thanks to the constant horrible and wholesale slaughter of the hundreds on occasion, and thousands of known preventtble deaths of the poor miners annually. A change has come over the spirit of the dream of even Mr. Secretary