hands; from 1835 to 1844, 1200 hands; and that amongst all these no fatal accident has occurred during the whole of this period. Mr. Thomas Ashton says, that from 1817 to 1824, he employed 400 hands; from 1824 to 1830, 800 hands; from 1830 to 1835, 1200 hands; and from 1835 to 1844, 1400 hands, and that in all this period only two fatal accidents had occurred, one of which was in the case of an overlooker, and neither of which could any possible precaution on the part of the proprietor have prevented. Messrs. J. Howard, and Co. state that from 1820 to 1844, they have employed 560 hands, and only one fatal accident has occurred, and that in the year 1820, none since then. Mr. A. W. Thorneley has for many years employed from 600 to 1000 persons, and has had no fatal accident in his mill, but has had one carter killed. In the concern with which I am myself connected, and which has been at work for 35 years, and now employs upwards of 500 persons, only one accident has occurred which terminated fatally, and that cannot fairly be charged upon machinery, and during the whole of that period no other serious accident has taken place. (Hear, hear.) The reports of the Coroners in the districts of Manchester and Stockport, fully bear out these statements of private individuals. From these reports, it appears, that from February 1842 to February 1843, in the Manchester district, not one person has been killed by any thing connected with shafting in a mill,

and only two by machinery in factories; aud in Stockport, during the same period, in fact, during the last two years,--no person has been killed by machinery, and only one by shafting, although this district includes 28 townships, and is a principal seat of the Cotton trade. (Hear, hear.) When the House considers how many mills there are in these districts, and the tens of thousands of persons employed in them, I think no Member can leave the House this night with an impression that there are more lives lost in cotton manufactories than in other employments; on the contrary, he must, I feel assured, be convinced that there are fewer, and that the statements of the Noble Lord and his party are gross and unfounded exaggerations. (Hear, hear.) Amongst carters there are far more fatal accidents than from all the factories of the United Kingdom. (Hear, hear.) I could bring facts which no man could dispute, from all the manufacturing districts, to support these statements, and it appears to me to be merely trifling with legislation to establish a public prosecutor, as is intended by this Bill, for accidents occurring in mills, when it may be proved beyond dispute, that, considering the numbers employed, there is a smaller loss of life in them than in any other mode of employment open to the great mass of our population. (Hear, hear.) Now, I will not detain the House with more than a single remark about the cruelties which it has been alleged are practised by millowners on their work people, for the absurdity of

such a charge must be manifest to all who take the trouble to reflect.

In the Factory Report, the Commissioners state, that

"To the charge of cruelty brought against the mill-owners, they can give the most decided and unqualified denial. It is not only not true, but cannot generally be true. That individual instances of ill-usage do occur, is doubtless true; and they will occur so long as man is actuated by human passions; but they are exceedingly rare, more rare, indeed, than in any other occupation in which children are employed."

It is notorious that the persons employed in mills, and in cotton mills especially, obtain a higher rate of wages than most others of the operative classes, and if they are thus better paid they must necessarily be more independent, and more able to resist aggression; and as they work generally along with their parents or relations, they have an additional security against ill-usage of every description. (Hear, hear.) The charge of immorality produced by factory labour is as groundless as that of cruelty inflicted, for, in page 201 of the Report, it is stated:

"As to the immorality said to be engendered by the factory system, the whole current of testimony goes to shew that the charges made against cotton factories on this head are calumnies."

On a former occasion the Noble Lord brought a heavy charge against the character of the working population of the town of Leeds. Were his statement a fair one, the condition of that town must be horrible in the extreme. Happily the charge was a most unfair one; and in a letter dated June 13,

1843, and referring to that charge, the then Mayor of Leeds says,

"In the appalling statement made by Lord Ashley of the degraded moral condition of Leeds, he quoted a passage from the Statistical Report of the Town Council, to shew how many juvenile offenders were brought before the magistrates for the borough, and by implication how immoral must be the general character of society in Leeds and similar large towns. This passage is an extract from a Note which I myself appended to one of the tables on CRIME.' I am well acquainted with the moral condition of the people, and you have my authority for stating that the inferences attempted to be drawn from that paragraph are entirely unwarrantable. That in a considerable community like Leeds there should be a large number of young delinquents, must be at once admitted. Most of them are the children of idle and profligate parents, who are attracted to a large town by the various resources which it offers to enable them to escape regular labour. THEY DO NOT BELONG TO THE WORKING POPULATION OF THE DISTRICT. They pursue chiefly a life of vagrancy, or adopt such eccentric modes of obtaining a livelihood as serve only as a covering for various acts of mendicancy or petty theft. Their children form no proportion of the juvenile population of the borough, nor of the aggregate amount of children employed in factories. To refer to these unfortunates as a type of the whole community of young persons, is as absurd as it would be to select as specimens of the physical vigour of the rising generation of operatives, the feeble and stunted children of a parish workhouse, who for the most part are the offspring of vice, and the heirs of disease.

"Lord Ashley also quotes the evidence of an active policeofficer, Mr. Child, in support of his dark picture of the moral condition of our town. No one can be better informed as to the worst features of our social state than that useful functionary : but to select his testimony in illustration of the general inquiry as to our moral condition, is obviously unreasonable and unfair.

The particular facts stated by him are no doubt painfully true, but they furnish no information as to the moral circumstances of the entire community, much less of that particular class of it, young people employed in factories.

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Why did not these impartial Commissioners inquire from other parties, besides police officers, as to the tendency of factory, labour upon our youthful population? Why did they not advance from the constable to the magistrate, or to the magistrates' clerk? If, indeed, the latter had been examined in relation to this important investigation, a very different result would have transpired. You have my authority for stating that the young people employed in factories are seldom brought before our local police tribunals; and the criminal youths so prominently referred to by Lord Ashley, as an important part of our local population, are not those who have been educated in our Sundayschools or are trained to labour in our fuctories, but the miserable and neglected children of the most reckless members of society, who have had the most imperfect education, and who have been at an early period initiated in the habits of indolence, profligacy, and vice."

The Noble Lord on this occasion has not said much about the education and religion of the manufacturing districts. From his speech one would suppose such matters were altogether unheard of there. It may therefore be worth while to mention a few facts bearing on this. It has been ascertained that more churches and chapels have been erected, in proportion to the population, in the manufacturing districts than in the city of Westminster, or in the whole of this metropolis. The returns shew that places of worship in the manufacturing parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and Derbyshire afford sittings for 45 per

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