exhausted; and, indeed, the new views of it which open upon us at every step of our progress, are so various, that I find it extremely difficult to proceed with steadiness towards those general conclusions which I wish to establish. Some of these views, I flatter myself, I may be able to prosecute hereafter, when I shall have leisure to survey more comprehensively, the whole field of inquiry. At present, the multiplicity of other articles to which I am anxious to direct your attention, compared with the limited extent of the course, obliges me to hasten to speculations of a different nature.

[1.-On the Employment of Children in Factory Work: its Advantages and Disadvantages.]

I cannot, however, bring to a close the discussions in which we have been last engaged, without taking notice of a new form in which manufacturing labour has lately appeared in this country, I allude to those establishments which, by employing crowds of children separated from the inspection of their parents, appear to threaten (at least on a superficial view of the subject) the most fatal consequences to the health and to the morals, as well as to the numbers, of the rising generation. The following statement of the fact, as it is exemplified on a very great scale, in Lancashire and some of the neighbouring counties, I borrow from Dr. Aikin's Description of the Country round Manchester.

"In the cotton mills, children of very tender age are employed; many of them collected from the workhouses of London and Westminster, and transported in crowds, as apprentices to masters resident many hundred miles distant, where they serve, unknown, unprotected, and forgotten by those to whose care Nature or the laws had consigned them. These children are usually too long confined at work, in close rooms, often during the whole night; the air they breathe, from the oil, &c., employed in the machinery, and other circumstances, is injurious; little regard is paid to their cleanliness; and frequent changes from a warm to a cold atmosphere are predisposing causes to sickness and debility, and particularly to the epidemic

fever which so generally is to be met with in these factories. It is also much to be questioned, if society does not receive detriment from the manner in which children are thus employed during their early years. They are not generally strong for labour, or capable of pursuing any other branch of business when the terin of their apprenticeship expires. The females are wholly uninstructed in sewing, knitting, and other domestic affairs, requisite to make them notable and frugal wives and mothers. This is a great misfortune to them and to the public, as is sadly proved by a comparison of the families of labourers in husbandry, and those of manufacturers in general. In the former, we meet with neatness, cleanliness, and comfort; in the latter, with filth, rags, and poverty, although their wages may be nearly double to those of the husbandman. It must be added, that the want of early religious instruction and example, and the numerous and indiscriminate association in these buildings, are very unfavourable to their future conduct in life."

These facts seem abundantly to justify the quare of a late humane and liberal writer, (Sir Frederick Morton Eden,) "Whether any manufacture, which, in order to be carried on successfully, requires that cottages and workhouses should be ransacked for poor children; that they should be employed by turns during the greater part of the night, and robbed of that rest which, though indispensable to all, is most required by the young; and that numbers of both sexes of different ages and dispositions, should be collected together in such a manner, that the contagion of example cannot but lead to profligacy and debauchery, will add to the sum of national felicity ?”*

The subject, undoubtedly, even when viewed in the most favourable light, is far from being pleasing; nor is it possible for any views of remote expediency to reconcile the mind to commercial projects, which are not only injurious to the morals of the community, but which require a sacrifice of the happiness attached by nature, to the gaiety, the freedom, and the innocent activity of childhood. As most political subjects,

*[State of the Poor, &c. Lond. 1797.]

however, may be considered under different aspects, and as it is more useful to attempt the melioration of unavoidable evils than to indulge ourselves in declamations against what it is beyond our power to remedy, it may be worth while to employ a few moments in examining, first, Whether the misery and profligacy described by Dr. Aikin be necessarily connected with these establishments, in the extent which he has stated; and, secondly, Whether they may not have their use in palliating some other disorders of a still more alarming nature, in a commercial and luxurious society, such as that in which they have arisen.

In answer to the first of these inquiries, it gives me great pleasure to mention the following particulars, which evince, in a very striking manner, how much may be effected by the active zeal of private humanity when wisely and systematically directed to its object, in alleviating those evils which, as they seem to originate in causes intimately connected with national wealth and prosperity, it is scarcely possible for the Legislator to remedy. The particulars I am to state relate to the Cotton Manufactory in the neighbourhood of Lanark, lately the property of Mr. Dale at Glasgow.*

The supply of workers for this establishment comes either from the native inhabitants of the place; from families who have been collected about the works from the neighbouring parishes, and more distant parts of the country; or, lastly, from Edinburgh and Glasgow, both of which towns constantly afford great numbers of destitute children.

The period during which they are engaged varies according to the circumstances of their situation. Those who receive weekly wages (the greater part of whom live with their parents) are commonly engaged for four years; while such as are sent from the workhouse in Edinburgh, or who are otherwise without friends to take the charge of them, are bound four, five, six,

[The same philanthropic care of these factory children, in relation to their comforts and education, was, after Mr. Dale's death, continued and ex

tended by his son-in-law, Mr. Robert Owen; whose theories though we must reject, we cannot but admire the benevolence of his intentions.]

or seven years, according to their age; their service continuing until they have completed their fifteenth year. Children of this last description receive, instead of wages, their maintenance and education.

The hours of labour are eleven and a half each day, from six in the morning till seven at night, with half an hour of intermission at nine o'clock for breakfast, and a whole hour at two for dinner.

Seven is the hour for supper; in half an hour after which the children go to school, where they continue till nine o'clock. In 1796, (after which period I cannot speak on the subject with the same accuracy,) the schools were attended by five hundred and seven scholars; in instructing whom in reading, writing, and the principles of arithmetic, besides the common branches of education appropriated to females, sixteen teachers, with two occasional assistants, were employed. Besides these night schools, there were two day schools for children too young for work; all of them unattended with any expense to the scholars. The utmost attention was paid, at all times, to the purity of their morals, and to their religious instruction.

Of the attention given to cleanliness, diet, and everything else connected with health, the following statement of the number of children in the boarding-house at different periods, compared with the annual deaths, affords the most satisfactory evidence. The greatest part of the workers, it is to be observed, are lodged with their parents, who reside either in the village, in the immediate neighbourhood, or in the town of Lanark, one mile distant; and, therefore, this statement is to be understood as applying to those who receive their maintenance instead of wages, and who are all lodged together in one house. This number, in 1796, amounted to 396 boys and girls.

With respect to their aptitude for other employments and the general state of their bodily strength, when their size disqualifies them for this species of labour, we are assured by Mr. Dale, in a printed letter addressed to Mr. Bailey of Hope, near Manchester, that "the workers, when too big for spinning, are as stout and robust as others of the same age. The male part of them are fit for any trades; a great many, since the commencement of the war, have gone into the army and navy, and others are occasionally going away as apprentices to smiths or joiners, but especially to weavers; for which last trade, from the expertness they acquire in handling yarn, they are particularly well fitted, and of course are taken as apprentices on better terms. The females very generally leave the mills and go to private family service, when about sixteen years of age. "Were they disposed to continue at the mills," Mr. Dale adds, "these afford abundant employment for them, as well as for many more young men than ever remain at them."

I shall only observe farther, before concluding this article, that if it were possible to restrain the unjustifiable practice of ransacking cottages and dissolving family connexions, by carrying away children to a distance from their homes; and if such establishments as have been now under review were confined to the orphan and destitute, supplied in such abundance by our great cities, their evil consequences would be much diminished; and they might even be considered as a salutary provision for some political disorders inseparably connected with our present system of manners. It will appear, in another part of the course, that the poverty and beggary which has prevailed so much in these last ages among the lower orders, arose necessarily from that important change which has gradually taken place in this part of Europe; the decrease of villainage, and the dependence of the body of the people on their own industry. This evil, therefore, is necessarily connected (although I am far from thinking that it is so to the extent in which it exists) with the manufactures and commerce to which this nation owes so much of its prosperity. In