young persons are rarely less than eleven; more often they are twelve; in some districts they are thirteen. In Derbyshire, children, &c. work sixteen hours out of the twentyfour, reckoning from the time they leave their home in the morning until they return to it in the evening." As regards the East of Scotland, there is "overwhelming evidence. The labour is often continued, on alternate days, at least fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen hours out of the twenty-four." Anne Hamilton, seventeen years old, says, "I have repeatedly wrought the twenty-four hours; and after two hours of rest and my pease-soup, have returned to the pit and worked another twelve hours." "In the great majority of these mines night-work is a part of the ordinary system of labour. The labour is generally uninterrupted by any regular time set apart for rest and refreshment; what food is taken in the pit being eaten as best it may while the labour continues. In the coal-mines of Ireland a fixed time is allowed, at least for dinner."

The physical effects on the workpeople are not so visible as might be supposed until a certain time of life; though some children suffer severely from mere exhaustion. One phenomenon is a preternatural and unhealthy muscular developement. The physical effects of this system of labour may be classed under these heads stunted growth, crippled gait, irritation of head, back, and feet, a variety of diseases, premature old age, and death. "Several," says Dr. Scott Allison, "become crooked. Diseases of the spine are very common and very serious. Several of the girls and women so employed

some

are distorted in the spine and pelvis, and suffer considerable difficulty at the period of parturition." Diseases of the heart are very frequent, say all the medical witnesses: many are ruptured, even lads, from over-exertion; are ruptured on both sides. But the most destructive and frequent disease is asthma: some are affected at seven or eight years of age; most colliers at the age of thirty become asthmatic. Dr. Scott Allison says, that between the ages of twenty and thirty, many colliers become more and more spare: "the want of proper ventilation," says an old miner, "is the chief cause; the men die off like rotten sheep." There was also another new disease, of which the House now heard perhaps for the first time-the awful melanosis or black spittle, attributed to the want of oxygen to decarbonize the blood, and by Dr. Makellar to a carbonaceous infiltration into the substance of the lung. The disease is incurable and fatal. The colliers, says Mr. Massey, Clerk to the Wellington Union, are disabled at forty; and one of the Commissioners says, that each generation of that class of the population is commonly extinct soon after fifty,

Lord Ashley then proceeded to describe the moral effects of the system as being equally ruinous and fatal. It superinduced a feeling of ferocity among the men, who exercised gross acts of cruelty upon the boys employed under them, sometimes inflicting fatal injuries upon them; such outrages, however, were so common as to excite no sensation. People would say, "Oh! it is only a collier;" and no more feeling was exhibited than if the same cruelty were exercised upon a dog. With respect

to the women, between overwork and demoralization, they were rendered wholly unfit for the duties of their sex. It appears that they are wholly disqualified from even learning how to discharge the duties of wife and mother. Matthew Lindley, a collier, says-"I wish the Government would expel all females from mines: they are very immoral; they are worse than the men, and use far more indecent language." George Armitage says, "Nothing can be Nothing can be worse. John Simpkin openly avowed the part which he had repeatedly taken in destroying the morals of the girls. Now, the corruption of the men is bad enough; but if we suffer the women to be corrupted, it is perfectly obvious that we are allowing the waters to be poisoned at their very source. Indeed, it appears that wherever girls are employed the immoralities are scandalous. The Reverend Richard Roberts says, "The practice of working females in mines is highly objectionable, physically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually." "It is awfully demoralizing," says Mr. Thornely, a Justice of the Peace for the county of York: "the youth of both sexes work often in a naked state." The Sub-Commissioner says, "The employment

of females in this district is universally conceived to be so degrading, that all other classes of operatives refuse intermarriage with the daughters of colliers who work in the pits." Joseph Fraser, a collier, says, "The employment unfits them for the duties of a mother: the men drink hard, the poor bairns are neglected; in fine, the women follow the men and drink hard also." "Under no conceivable circumstances," says

the Sub-Commissioner, "is any one sort of employment in collieries proper for females: the practice is flagrantly disgraceful to a Christian as well as to a civilized country." "I have scarcely an exception to the general reprobation of this revolting abomination." "I am decidedly of opinion," says Mr. Thornely," that women brought up in this way lay aside all modesty, and scarcely know what it is but by name. I sincerely trust that before I die I shall have the satisfaction of seeing it prevented and entirely done away with." "Now, I know," added Lord Ashley, "that the Commissioners have not by any means told the worst of the story. They could not, in fact, commit to print for general circulation all the facts and circumstances that have come to their knowledge in connexion with this system: but it does not require any very vigorous imagination on the part of those who have read or heard these statements, to draw from them conclusions amounting to a state of things which is not only disgraceful, but highly injurious to the country."

After reciting these painful details, the exposure of which produced a strong sensation of indignant surprise and reprobation in the House, Lord Ashley proceeded to state the means which he should call upon the Legislature to adopt for an immediate removal of the most hideous and appalling features of the system which he had described. The first provision, demanded by the most urgent and imperative necessity, was the total exclusion of female labour from all mines and collieries in the country. Few, he believed, had any real interest in keeping the women so employed. The motives

of those who induced them to undergo the shameful toil, as described by the workpeople, were, that they do not catch cold, are more manageable, more intelligent at an early age, are content always to remain drawers without rising to be coal-getters, and work for lower wages; and Mr. Wright, the manager of Mr. Ramsay's mines, a highly intelligent and moral man, stated the disgusting reason, that women will work in bad roads where no man could be induced to draw. The advantage of excluding women was not a mere matter of speculation; Mr. Wright had had experience of that regulation in the mines under his care. He said " Four years ago, I superintended Mr. Ramsay's mines: females and young children were excluded. A vast change took place in the comfort and condition of the colliers who availed themselves of the new regulations. Some families left at the period, being desirous to avail themselves of the labour of their female children; many of whom have returned, and the colliers are much more regular than heretofore." This was confirmed by the evidence of Thomas Hynd, coal-hewer in Mr. Dundas's pits; who said "When Mr. Maston first issued the order, many men and families left: but many have returned, for they find, now the roads are improved, and the out-put not limited, they can earn as much money, and get homes: many of the females are gone to service, and prefer it." Mr. Wright continued "This will force the alteration of the economy of the mines; owners will be compelled to alter their system; they will ventilate better, and make better roads, and so change the system as to enable men who now

work only two days a-week to discover their own interest in regularly employing themselves." All this was confirmed by the statements of an honourable friend of his, Mr. Hulton of Hulton, who had been in the possession of pits for five-and-twenty years, and had never suffered females or children of tender years to enter them. The conséquence was, that the population around those pits was in a state of greater comfort, and distinguished by a better morality, than the people of other collieries. Mr. Maxton of Armiston, and Mr. Hunter, the mining oversman, state, that "in consequence of a new ventilation, and an improved mode of railing roads, a man and two boys take nearly as much money as when the family were below; and many of the daughters of miners were at a respectable service." Mr. Maxton added, that before the regulations, colliers used to migrate in the proportion of one-fourth, but now not one-tenth do so.

The next provision of the proposed Bill would exclude all boys under thirteen years of age. This, he was aware, was the greatest difficulty of his measure. The Factory Act prohibited the employment of boys under thirteen for the full time of labour in the day-viz. twelve hours; and it was objected that there was a deficiency of juvenile labour, as the children were carried to printworks and collieries, to which the law did not extend. He would place the latter on the same footing with the factories, and he hoped the children would be drawn off in sufficient numbers to allow of two sets being employed by the manufacturers in the day. To allow the children to go down into

the mines at all would be out of the question.

They would be entirely under the control of the miners; and subterranean inspection would be impossible, as the life of the inspector would not be safe: few of the police would even venture to pursue fugitive offenders into the mines. One of the dangers of employing young children in the mines would appear from the following extract" With all the precautions, explosions take place, and more than one hundred people have been killed at a time." And no wonder ; " for all the expedients devised to secure the safety of the mine may be counteracted by allowing one single trap-door to remain open and yet in all the coal-mines the care of these trapdoors is intrusted to children of from five to seven or eight, who for the most part sit, excepting at the moment when persons pass through these doors, for twelve hours consecutively, in solitude, silence, and darkness." The children are wholly at the mercy of the colliers; who over-work them to make up for time lost in drinking, gambling, and cock-fighting.

The next important provision in his Bill would be to prevent the employment of males under twentyone years of age as engineers. The employment of children in that capacity was a fertile cause of accidents. The accidents which occur, says the Sub-Commissioner in the mining district of South Staffordshire, are numerous, and to judge from the conversation which one constantly hears, one might consider the whole population as engaged in a campaign. The risk is constant and imminent. "It is a life," says a collier, "of great danger both for man and child; a

collier is never safe after he is swung off to be let down the pit." In 1838, in fifty-five districts of registration 349 deaths occurred, of which 88 only were caused by explosion or suffocation, the rest through the unguarded state of the pit's mouth, the badness of the ropes, the mismanagement of the drawing-engine, and the accumulation of water in the mines. He wished particularly to draw the attention of the House to the fact, that the miners were drawn up and let down in baskets moved by the steam-engine at the pit's mouth. This engine was frequently left in charge of children of twelve, eleven, and even nine years of age. Let the House hear the result of such a practice. Mr. Wild, Chief Constable of Oldham, whose duty it is to collect evidence for the Coroner's inquests, said—“” It is a general system here to employ mere children to tend these engines, and to stop them at the proper moment; and if they be not stopped, the two or three or four or five persons, wound up together, are thrown over the beam down into the pit again. There have been people wound over at Oldham Edge, at Werneth, at Chamber Lane, at Robin Hill, at Oldbottom, and on Union Ground here, within the last six or seven years.

Does not know a case in which children were not the engineers. Three or four boys were killed in this way at the Chamber Lane Colliery, by the momentary neglect of a little boy, who, he thinks, was only nine years of age; and who, he heard, had turned away from the engine when it was winding up, on his attention being attracted by a mouse on the hearth."

The fourth and last principal

provision was the abolition of apprenticeship. This proposition Lord Ashley supported by the evidence of the Commissioners, stating, that in some parts of the country, boys were bound wholesale from the union workhouses; that those who were driven by necessity into a workhouse were then compelled to work in the mines till the age of twenty-one, when their labour was worth 20s, or 25s. per week, solely for the benefit of others; while, notwithstanding this long apprenticeship, it appeared from the statements of persons well qualified to judge, that there was nothing whatever to learn in the coal-mine beyond a little dexterity, to be readily acquired by short practice. Another ill effect of the apprenticing system was, that the boys being paupers, and frequently orphans or friend less, the masters cared not to what dangers they exposed them, and treated them generally with the utmost brutality. Of this, Lord Ashley stated some painful instances that had occurred. In conclusion, he contrasted the state of the unhappy victims of this system with the preparations made for the health and comfort of the prisoners in the new Pentonville prison. He read a return of the Manchester police, on whose accuracy reliance could be placed, to show the demoralized condition of the people in the manufacturing districts; though there was no reason to believe that Manchester was worse than other large towns in this respect. Unless the Legislature were speedily to remove these seeds of evil, he could not but apprehend that they would result in a popular outbreak, which would destroy the body social of these realms. He concluded in

the language of Scripture, saying, "Let us break off our sins by righteousness, and our iniquities by showing mercy to the poor."

Mr. Fox Maule seconded the motion, warmly complimenting Lord Ashley for having preferred the unobtrusive task of benevolence to that more splendid and glittering path which ambition might have opened to him.

Mr. Hedworth Lambton expressed his thanks for this, among the many proofs which Lord Ashley had given, of his anxiety to protect the interests of the labouring poor. He was gratified to find, that the counties of Durham and Northumberland were particularly free from those charges that had excited the indignation of the House. He thought that children were accustomed to begin work too early, but he conceived there must be some slight error or exaggeration in the Report: for out of forty-seven collieries, an authentic return showed that the youngest child was eight years old; and as to the unhealthiness of the employment, the young men appeared to him to be lively and cheerful at their work; and he had received a letter from the manager of an extensive mining concern, who stated that he could produce examples of pitmen healthy and active at ages varying from sixty to sixty-eight, and even to seventy; certainly, large numbers at sixty, and among them many who had been hewers for upwards of forty years.

Lord Francis Egerton begged also to thank Lord Ashley sincerely for his exertions. In the district with which he was connected, he did not believe that the employment of females was incompatible with health; but,