position that it could not abuse it, and that the ensuring of the convertibility of bank notes was the great reason for bringing forward the measure of 1844. The hon. Member for Huntingdon (Mr. T. Baring), the right hon. Member for Tamworth (Sir R. Peel), and the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Cardwell), had all spoken of the discretion of the Bank. It seemed now that to render the measure tolerable they were to rely on the discretion of the Bank. He did not say they should not speak of that body; but if the trade of the country was to be made to depend upon a judicious exercise of its discretion, was it wise or prudent to fetter the directors in such a manner as to run the risk of their strangling the trade of the country? These views were not new to him. He felt them very strongly in 1844, and he felt them strongly still. The vast amount of authority which was brought to bear in support of the measure of 1844, and the almost unanimous assent of the House to it, carried it to the country with a great measure of favour. He did not think, however, that the evidence of the Committee had justified that Bill. He admitted that that evidence had fully established the fact, that the issues of the country banks required to be placed under control; but the propriety of limiting the circulation of the Bank of England in the manner which that measure had done, was a very different question. He, for one, had always doubted the wisdom of it; and he hoped another bad harvest would not give them another proof of its bad effects. Bill considered in Committee: to be reported. House adjourned at half-past Twelve o'clock. HOUSE OF COMMONS, Saturday, May 15, 1847. MINUTES) PUBLIC BILLS.-10 Herring Fishery (Scotland). Reported.-Loan Discount. lums (Ireland). PUBLIC GRANARIES. The EARL of WINCHILSEA, pursuant to notice, rose to bring under the consideration of the House the expediency of establishing public granaries. He had every reason to suppose, from the information he had received, that if the coming harvest were late, the quantity of corn now in the country would be inadequate to the wants of the people in the meantime. In the year 1835, he remembered that the price of wheat was as low as 35s. a quarter; and if public granaries had been established at that time, 2,000,000 of quarters might have been bought for 3,500,000l., and a sufficient stock might always have been kept on hand. What he wished, then, to advocate was this-that there should be national granaries in the hands and under the control of the Government, and that as long as the agricultural interests or the corn trade should supply the best quality of wheat at a reasonable price, those granaries should be kept closed; but that if the time should arrive when, from any danger of the crops at home, or unfair speculation, the corn traders should withhold a supply at a price at which the great body of the labouring classes could afford to buy, then the doors should be opened, and the price of corn kept as level and low as possible. We could not rely upon the harvest: it depended upon the will and bounty of a superior Power, and no foresight could assure us of an adequate supply. If, then, with our existing scarcity of corn, we al 3o and passed:-Turnpike Roads (Ireland); Lunatic Asy-lowed the stock we now possessed to be PETITIONS PRESENTED. By Mr. Sheridan, from Owners and Occupiers of Land in the County of Dorset, in favour wright and other hon. Members, from several places, for Regulating the Qualification of Chemists and Druggists. of the Agricultural Tenant-Right Bill.-By Mr. Ark poured out to the assistance of our foreign neighbours (and he understood that within the last few days the French Government had bought in this country flour and wheat to a great extent), considering the dense mass of our population in the manufacturing great many places, in favour of the Medical Registration districts and in the metropolis, a frightful -By Mr. P. Howard, from Carlisle, against, and by Mr. Sheridan, from Piano-Forte Makers of London, in favour of, the Health of Towns Bill.-By Mr. Hawes, from a and Medical Law Amendment Bill. state of things must be the consequence. He did not intend, however, to conclude with any Motion on the subject, but would EARL GREY hoped that his noble Friend would not think he was in any degree wanting in respect to him if he said that the subject to which his noble Friend had referred, was too large and important to be disposed of by any incidental discussion, opening as it did the whole question of free trade and various other matters; and that, as important business stood for that evening, he was afraid it could not then be discussed with advantage. He would, therefore, abstain from making any remark upon what had fallen from his noble Friend; not because he agreed with him, or because he differed from him, but because he looked with great anxiety to the state of the country, and thought that the subject ought to be discussed when more attention could be given to it. FACTORY BILL. be satisfied with having called the attention | ly present to the mind than if he was preof the Government to it. sent in either. His labours on this subject, from their earnest sincerity and singular perseverance, as well as from substantial sacrifices which have attended them, at least entitle him, in my opinion, to the readiest acquiescence in his wishes, and to the largest measure of co-operation and support in his views which the opinions and abilities of any friend of his enable you to afford. My Lords, I have spoken of the subject of this Bill as one which, comparatively speaking, has occupied little of your Lordships' time and attention. I have, nevertheless, the satisfaction of feeling that I am not under the difficulty of recommending to your Lordships the adoption of any new principle of legislation, and still less of any origination in this House of any proposition whatever. My Lords, the measures now proposed for your acceptance have originated in far different quarters than in the mind of one so little entitled to your Lordships' attention as myself. They have originated in the crowded receptacles of human labour-they have been elaborated in the factory and the alley, amid the whirl of machinery, and in those long rows of lodging houses which grow up around the giant chimneys of Lancashire and Yorkshire. This Bill has its root in the stern experience of the husband and the father. From this humble, but, I am sure in your Lordships' view, not contemptible seed, the idea has mounted upwards in the shape of such petitions as those which have encumbered your Lordships' Table. Men of higher education-men whose lives are one professional and practical exercise of philanthropy, have assisted the progress of the measure to the ears of the Legislature by their sanction and their advocacy; medical men in every branch of practice, clergymen of every religious persuasion. Springing from such a source, founded on such a basis of feeling and opinion, it has made its way through much difficulty against The EARL of ELLESMERE said: In rising to discharge the duty I have undertaken of moving the Second Reading of the Bill now before your Lordships for limiting the Hours of Labour in Factories, I should be sorry to waste your Lordships' time with any prefatory matter of a personal nature. I must, however, take permission frankly and briefly to express my regret that a subject which has of late years excited so much interest and discussion elsewhere, but which has little occupied the direct attention of your Lordships here, should not have the advantage of being introduced to it by some voice more familiar to your Lordships' ears, and by some authority to which your Lordships are more accustomed to defer. My apology to your Lordships and myself consists in the circumstance, that having having taken, in the discussions which the subject has undergone in another place, a part which, however humble and occasional, was not inconsistent with the task I have now undertaken, I have been invited to its per-powerful opposition, till it has obtained the formance by a numerous body of those who are directly interested in the fate of this measure, and who earnestly desire its success. I must also state, that I am acting at the earnest desire of a noble Friend of mine, of whom I may say, as was said of certain great men whose images were missed in the procession of the Roman triumph, that, with reference to this subject, his absence from either House of Parliament makes him even more conspicuous sanction of an influential portion of the Cabinet, of a conclusive majority of the House of Commons, and, so supported and recommended, has reached the Table of your Lordships' House. I state these things, my Lords, not for the purpose of inducing any one of your Lordships to abdicate your privilege of free discussion or of deliberate judgment. Latest and least of the accessions to your Lordships' House, I should be sorry to signalize my first en deavour at addressing your Lordships by proposing any surrender of your independence, any infraction of your privileges. Considering, however, the nature of the question at issue-considering that in the majorities which have sanctioned this measure elsewhere-considering that every debateable point has been argued elsewhere by men who have stood on their own weary feet at the mule, and pieced the thread with their own hands, and who, by the strong exercise of that strong intelligence which appears to me an indigenous plant of the manufacturing districts of England, by their perseverance in honest industry, have raised themselves to the House of Commons-I ask you this at least-I ask you to receive this Bill with something of that prima facie deference with which, some months ago, I as a Member of the House of Commons should have received some measure of equity law perchance, which had come down to that House, having passed through the ordeal of those legal minds which adorn and instruct, and in such measures greatly govern your Lordships' deliberations. My Lords, the principle of this Bill has been impugned, as involving legislative interference with the rights of capital and labour. I might slur over this objection on the ground of repeated precedent. In the House of Commons I would do so; but addressing your Lordships, who have been less engaged with the subject, I think it more respectful briefly to attempt my own vindication on this head. I am not one of those who presume out of their own ignorance or idleness to cast reflections on the acute and laborious men who have devoted themselves to the science of political economy, nor am I a sceptic as to the general validity of the main tenets of that school, nor an impugner of the truths which it professes to have demonstrated. I am prepared, however, if necessary, to contend that I am advocating nothing inconsistent with the doctrines of political economy at all. I do not wish to enter at length on such debateable ground, but I would much rather refer your Lordships to an argument which you will find in the debates, delivered by a noble Earl now on the Ministerial bench, who drew the just distinction between restrictions on labour and capital devised to increase wealth, and those intended for other purposes to guard against want and physical evils. My Lords, I dislike a meddling Government. I believe, with him, that for the creation of the greatest producible wealth -- in any given community, and therefore for the widest diffusion of that material wellbeing which attends the production of wealth, the policy of abstinence from legislative meddling is the surest policy; and, therefore, I think it incumbent on any one who departs from that policy to assign distinct grounds for his justification. The master manufacturer and the operative have both a right, I admit it, to say to me, "you are interfering with my free action, you are selecting mine from a crowd of other occupations, to make it the subject of experimental legislation. I claim an explanation. I demand an exceptional reason for your conduct.' My Lords, I find that justification, as most of your Lordships will anticipate, in the inherent, inalienable tendencies of that agent which Watt, forced into the service of man, as applied to the four great branches of our textile industry which come under the provisions of, this Bill: I mean the tendency, in the first instance, to attract to its ministration the labour of those whom in respect of age or sex, or both, nature never intended for hard and continuous labour; and, next, in its tendency to make that labour continuous, and unceasing, and protracted, to a limit of physical and mental endurance, which, in my opinion, no Christian Legislature can see its subjects approach without acknowledging the duty of interfering if it can interfere-for their relief and protection. It is on this ground, my Lords, that, finding as I do with regard to these branches of industry, the means and opportunity of interference, I claim the right to exercise them. I say, my Lords, finding the means and opportunity, for this also is an essential element of practical interference, and is my reply to an argument, which, though often used, is, I think, singularly inconclusive-to a course of reasoning very commonly adopted towards any man who is hunting down a particular grievance, and which endeavours to divert his attention by pointing out fifty other objects in pursuit. My Lords, there is doubtless enough of abuse and misery and oppression in the world to make a sentimental or flighty philanthropist fold his arms in despair. My Lords, I invite your Lordships to interfere with these large collective aggregations of labour, because theory and experience tell me you can do so with effect-because they are open to inspection, and capable of control-because you can do much to prevent abuse, and, if the hard necessity arise, to punish it. I I am aware that this very feature of the case | cerned? I say machinery of human conhas been alleged as a reason for non-inter- trivance, for I hold that, in some sense, the ference; it has been said that the factory earth itself is a machine-that the clod of system is the very department of our in- the valley in which you drop the germ of dustry in which abuse and oppression are future vegetation is as much a machine as most discoverable, and can least escape de- that in which you deposit your portions of tection. We have been repeatedly told raw cotton. In another place, my Lords, that we take an unphilosophical view of I took the liberty of telling the lords of the effects of the use of machinery; that it the soil, that in this point of view I conis the great diminisher of the sum of men- sidered them as monster manufacturers; tal and physical labour, the fertile source and I re-assert that opinion here. Your of leisure and contentment; and that we Lordships, in the management of heredishould be cautious how we meddle with its tary estates which have descended to you operations. I admit these facts; but I from the Conquest, are connected with demand your Lordships' attention to some machinery as well as Mr. Greg; but, my further facts connected with the employ- Lords, there is a difference between the ment of that fixed and expansive capital, machinery of God's contrivance and that into the scope and effect of which it be- of his creatures. The earth will work comes a duty from which, as a legislator, alone, in the silence of night, under the I cannot shrink from inquiring. There is, stars of heaven, unlit by your gas, unfed in my opinion, no grander result of human by your fires, admitting at intervals, which intelligence than a large cotton mill; but nature indicates, the regulated assistance say this of it, that from the moment its of man, taking him into partnership, but engine is started, raised by the capital and with no direct tendencies to make him its governed by the will of the acute and en- slave. Such, my Lords, are the consideraterprising individual who sits in its office, tions which have induced me to overcome it becomes the direct interest of that pre- the repugnance I individually entertain to siding genius that its motions should be as meddling with concerns which, from their unceasing and continuous as human con- magnitude and complexity, I dread to aptrivance can make them-that there is no proach. If they act upon your Lordships' part of that vast system of wheels and minds, as they have acted upon mine, as levers which can rest without loss, or, in they have already, in repeated instances, the ordinary and average course of com- acted upon the Legislature at large, the mercial prosperity, pursue its motions with- question of principle is disposed of, and we out gain. The human labour attached hand enter upon the more delicate and practical and foot to that system, for the most part, consideration of the degree to which we admits not of relays. What is the natural, shall extend our interference. My Lords, the inevitable consequence of this? Why, after long discussion, after repeated conthat which has resulted-that with which, sideration, the House of Commons has destep by step, gradually, cautiously, effec- cided, so far as that branch of the Legislatually, and successfully, you have been ture can decide, that the labour of women endeavouring for thirty years to moderate and young persons under 18 years of age and curtail, in wise defiance of the stated shall be limited to ten hours of work, exprinciples of political economy. That the clusive of the two which are necessary for strong impulse of gain is placed in direct refreshment. I am bound to state, though and dangerous antagonism with the claims no one of your Lordships can be ignorant of humanity—that it almost invariably pre- of the fact, that from the necessary intervails in the struggle, as for a time it was mixture of the hands of different ages and left, and if left to itself, unchecked and sexes in the operations of the manufacture, uncontrolled, it reduces a part of your this provision will include in its indirect population to the condition of slavery, un- operation those whom it does not directly mitigated by that interest in the physical affect. Adult man is not affected directly well-being of the party which does operate by it; but I can by no means avail myself on the slave-owner of Carolina. My Lords, of that circumstance in arguing as to the such things have been; to prevent them you real effect of the measure; well knowing have repeatedly interfered, and your exer- this, the adult population of the manufactions have not been in vain. Now, my Lords, turing districts so far from shrinking from does the same reason hold good with other the consequences, is to an enormous extent departments of human industry in which interested in its acceptation by your Lordmachinery of human contrivance is less con- ships. I believe that an overwhelming ma jority of it is at this moment trembling with of the amount of actual domestic economy expectation, perhaps with just apprehen- which may be effected by the mother of sion, that the cause they support may three children who returns to her home suffer prejudice from my own incapacity two hours sooner than at present. I as an advocate. I do not state this as an cannot calculate this, because I cannot argument to your Lordships-I admit it- sew-I cannot darn-I cannot washbut as a subordinate consideration to my- and I cannot cook-still less can I calcuself. I think it an unquestionable colla- late the evanescent quantities, the social teral advantage that its acceptance will effects of leisure and repose to the mind, or realize hopes which have been entertained lay down in advance statistical results on and fostered since the attempt of the late bodily health or longevity. I have no Sir R. Peel, in 1815, whose measure, doubt whatever that the average sum total which was on the verge of completion, was of these elements, if they could be calcunearly a fac-simile of the present. I think lated, would show a set-off to any probable it a vast advantage that it will put a close diminution of money wages, which will one to a peaceful and orderly, but an intense day be satisfactory to those who have coand peculiar agitation; but I do not state operated in passing this measure. On this (On this as a reason for influencing your Lord- subject I must also call your Lordships' ships' better judgments. I think a Bill, attention to another circumstance the supported by such majorities in the House deductions are made, when the article is of Commons entitled to much respect; but brought in by the operative, for waste and I am not here to register the decisions of spoil. My Lords, from such information that House, or to induce your Lordships as I can obtain, it is my firm belief that to do so. I accept this measure because nine-tenths of that spoiled will arise in the we find, after some hesitation-after lis- last weary hours of the operative's present tening much, and thinking much, and speaking a little, I think it a beneficial bargain, by which the parties to be affected will obtain certain advantages of incalculable importance to them, at a risk of certain sacrifices which it is not possible precisely to calculate, but which will leave at the least the balance of advantage largely in favour of those who have to make them. (Two main objections have been taken to the measure,) two principal and inevitable consequences have been held out as certain to ensue. (It is said that, by striking off a twelfth from the time during which, when employment is rife, you are at present able to labour, you will either diminish wages or cause defeat from foreign competition.) I am I am not bound throughout to argue with those who predict both these consequences, because I think the one consequence. lost in connexion with the other. (For the first of these consequences I have always advised those with whom I had been in communication to be prepared, and I have certainly always received the advice that, to the best of their ability, they had counted the cost and were prepared on behalf of themselves and their families to encounter it) I am not fond of prophesying in matters of this description; but if on the one hand I am not prepared to risk my reputation for accuracy on a calculation of the exact effect upon wages, on the other, I ask any man to favour me with a calculation VOL. XCII. Third Series average toil. I have never met with any man of any class, conversant with the subject, who has not laid much stress on this circumstance. I pass, my Lords, to the question of foreign competition, I do not profess to receive with indifference, from men for whose station, acquirements, and abilities I have profound respect, their ideas on this subject; but I am consoled by the reflection that no step has been taken in this matter which has not been preceded by similar warnings of ruin, and similar threats of emigration by them, which I doubt not have assailed many of your Lordships as they have assailed me. (And yet) my Lords, I hold in my hand a paper which shows that (England has yet held her own against the competition of the world, and which leads me to think that if she is allowed to suffer decay, it will originate rather in a diminished supply of the raw material than in any legislation which, for the sake of the highest interests of humanity, we may have consented to adopt. My Lords, I must say that the language of some of these parties has varied very much with circumstances, in a very short space of time. I am addressing many now who retain, through evil report and good, the opinions which they have uniformly expressed in favour of restrictions on the free importation of corn; but I doubt whether the sternest adherent to that system would not admit that, whilst those restrictions existed, the case of the master manufac 2 G |