The dragging, wearying monotony of the machine; the stifling heat (in the dressing department sometimes at ninety-eight degrees); the unbroken noise; the necessity of constant action on the part of the workers; render the place and the employment all but intolerable. Whilst reflecting on the misery endured, the positive social injustice done to the children sentenced to the machine, we thought, glancing at the cotton, of the lines in Gray's ode : "See the grisly texture grow; 'Tis of human entrails made!"— To proceed with the destiny of our Factory Child, no longer a thing of infancy. A very, very few years pass over her head, and at sixteen, at most, she is probably a wife; her husband, it may be, almost a year older than his spouse. Here is the history of her father and mother acted over again by her miserable help-mate and herself: a generation of the same puny, stunted race: the same supply of infant bones for the Moloch engine; the same privations; the same weariness and hopelessness of condition:-again, the same early wedlock; again, the same weak and pallid progeny. And is there no remedy for this? Are the triumphs of man's intellect, as manifested in his subjugation and direction of the elements, only to benefit the few to the harder bondage of the many? Is steam to be a ruthless giant, crushing and grinding the bones of the helpless; or a beneficent agent, ministering to the wants of the wide family of man; and, by doing his behests, giving him golden leisure, by which he may refine his nature, seeking to know its purpose and its end? We can imagine that we hear the derisive laughter of the worldlings at this query-this question for a college of Utopia: we can see the contempt curling their lips at the silly question-the raving worthy of Bedlam! "Will it always be thus?" thought we, as we passed various factories in gloomy Manchester, and saw the miserable, dwarfish race of men and women, the more miserable children, leaving their work, spent, wearied, heartsick, for their squalid homes. "Will it always be thus ?" we repeated, "or is the present generation doomed to work out the fearful crisis, a brighter day dawning for the unborn poor? Is the present race only sentenced to travel hungry through the wilderness, the land of promise being the inheritance of the generation to come? Are the children of the future men to enjoy the oil and honey, locusts being the hard fare of the present times?-Will it," again we asked, "will it always be thus?” As we sat, with half-closed eyes, nodding at the inn fire, a great event took place. Suddenly, all human labour was performed by steam. There was no employment for the hands of the multitude, the machines being the sacred property of a few; who, thus possessing the ready means of every enjoyment, were masters of the world. All Manchester was as a city smitten with the plague. Men became as howling beasts: grass grew at the threshold of the factory, and the owl hooted from the market place. Desolation reigned throughout the land; yet was it told to men that the noblest triumph achieved by human wit-the greatest discovery that could glorify the human mind had been even then manifested upon the earth. This was said, and men stared with glassy eyes, and laughed the laugh of idiotcy. They pointed to the pinched cheeks of their children; to the haggard features of their wives; whilst the suckling wailed at the dry breast of its mother. Still there were some who bade men be patient; who preached to them of a new birth; of the advent of a creature that, however hideous in its mien, and cruel in its acts, would be the champion of the rights of men; the benevolent dispenser of the fruits of the earth; the giver of all good things beneficently sent for human use. Thus ran the tale, but men cursed the thing for a monster a demon-a fiend that laughed at the hunger of the poor; that slumbered to the music of their groans. We had snatched the bread from millions that it might be nought with the few! It was thus that men, with the consuming fire of famine at their hearts, pictured their believed destroyer. At length, casting away his guise of terror, this much cursed power revealed itself in its true form and looks to men. What graciousness was in its aspect, what benevolence, what music flowed from its lips! Science was heard, and the savage hearts of men were melted; the scales fell from their eyes; a new life thrilled through their veins; their apprehensions were ennobled ; and, as Science spoke, the multitude knelt in love and in obedience: "The evils done-the sufferings inflicted upon man-were inevitable, nay, necessary, to my present condition. As, however, man has sacrificed to my childhood, so in the maturity of my strength, shall the family of man be gladdened with my bounty. I seemed to plan for the few, to the dismay and wretchedness of the many; and for a time it could not be otherwise, the few were gorged, and the multitude famished. Now, can Science in the fulness of its power, achieve nearly all the work of men; Science has then no longer a few task-masters, but labours for the human race. Henceforth, want and toil, and the injustice which they foster, shall disappear from the land; and knowledge and peaceful thoughts, the fruit of innocent leisure, dignify and soften God's own image." A heavy step across the floor startled us, and destroyed the vision: it was the tread of a commercial traveller, who had stalked to the bell to give notice of his wants, a sixth glass of brandy-and-water. "So I see; sir, by the paper," said he, "that they're going to meddle with the factory children again: for my part, I always think things are better as they are.' And the commercial traveller spoke the smug philosophy of the breeches' pocket; the comfortable, cosey creed of good men who have never cut a throat, or dishonoured a bill. But things cannot be as they are: the time is approaching when the wrongs at this moment eating like ulcers in the social body, will be classed with the cruelty of bygone ages. Another generation, and they who insist on the necessity of the condition of the nine years old Factory Child of our day, will take their places with the admirers of thumb-screws-the champions of the social value of the steel-boot.—Douglas Jerrold. A Proprietor. 'Tis not to be told What servile villainies men will do for gold. In going from thee, but go backward out, With my face toward thee, with humble courtesies. Ben Jonson. A Shopkeeper.-He lives by the labour of his own tongue, and other men's hands, and gains more by his flat downright lying than the artificer does by all his industry. His tongue is a kind of tailor's goose or hot press, with which he sets the last gloss upon his coarse decayed wares. He walks in his shop with the yard-wand always in his hand instead of a staff, that it may wear shorter and save his conscience harmless, if he should have occasion to swear it was never cut since he had it. The more trust men repose in him, the more certain he is to cheat them, as tailors always make the clothes of those the scantiest who allow them the largest measure. He sets a value on his commodities not according to their true worth, but the ignorance of the buyer: and always sells cheapest to those whom he finds to understand most of his trade; but he that leaves it to him is sure to be cheated; for he that lives by lying will never be scrupulous in making money by his reputation.-Butler. ["As mortar sticketh between stones, so sticketh fraud between buying and selling." How might our honest and tender-conscienced traders be spared the terrible throes and fierce travail wherewith lies are brought forth, were there no private property to necessitate fraud, no inordinate individual accumulation of the fruits of the common labour to occasion that continual bartering and traffic, that huckstering and cheating and cheapening and overreaching, which is so fervently and incessantly exclaimed against by the commercial Preachers of Christ's religion !] ** "GLORIOUS" EFFECTS OF A DISPUTE ABOUT PROPERTY. FROM this time, there no longer existed amongst them any fraternity in arms, any endearment of society, any tie of cordiality or scarcely of acquaintanceship; excess of misery seemed to have brutified them. Hunger, craving and maddening hunger, had reduced them to the brutal instinct of selfpreservation, to the sole operating principle of the most ferocious animals, ready to sacrifice every thing to itself. A barbarous and cruel nature appeared to have superseded all their former feelings. Like savages, the strongest plundered the weakest: they hastened with rapacious eagerness towards the dying, and sometimes began the work of plunder without waiting for the signal of their last sighs. When a horse fell, you might have conceived yourself to have seen a pack of famished hounds rushing on the carcase. They instantly surrounded and tore it in pieces, fighting for them with each other like voracious dogs. When from exhaustion they halted for a moment, winter with his icy and heavy hand made many of them his victims. In vain was it, that the unfortunate men, on feeling themselves benumbed, rose up, and already in a state of speechlessness and nearly of insensibility, moved on for a few paces mechanically their blood froze in their veins, they reeled and staggered as in a state of drunkenness. Their eyes, reddened and inflamed by constantly looking on the dazzling snow, by the deprivation of rest, and the smoke of their bivouacs, shed literally tears of blood; the deepest sighs heaved from their bosoms; they gazed on the sky, on their comrades, and on the ground, with eyes of consternation fixed and haggard : it was their last, their mute farewell. They soon fell upon their knees, and almost immediately upon their hands; their heads still vibrated for a few instants from side to side, and their gasping mouths uttered some disjointed and agonizing sounds; at length, their heads fell also on the snow, staining it with their dark and livid blood, and their scene of suffering was over. Their companions passed them without moving out of their way a single step, through fear of only so far lengthening their journey; without even turning their heads towards the spot, for their beard and hair were stuck over with heavy icicles, and every movement was attended with pain. They did not even utter any lamentation for them. Such were the last days of the GRAND ARMY. Its last nights were more dreadful still. Those who were overtaken by night in a body at a distance from any habitation, halted on the border of a wood. There they kindled fires, in front of which they remained the whole night, upright and motionless like spectres. They were unable to obtain a sufficiency of this heat, and approached so near that their clothes were absolutely burnt, and sometimes also the frozen parts of their bodies, which the fire decomposed. Then an irresistible attack of pain compelled them to stretch themselves at their length on the ground, and in the morning they attempted in vain to rise. But even greater horrors still were exhibited in the vast pent-houses or sheds which lined some parts of the road. Soldiers and officers all rushed promiscuously into these, and almost threw themselves upon each other in heaps. There, like cattle, they closely wedged against one another around their fires, and the living, not being able to remove the dead from the hearth, placed themselves upon them to expire in their turn, and serve as a death-bed to succeeding victims. Soon other parties of stragglers presented themselves; but, after hastening to obtain the desired heat, were driven away by those who had first arrived; and not being able to penetrate into these asylums of misery, they besieged them. It frequently happened that they pulled down the walls of these buildings, which consisted of dry wood, to keep up their fires; at other times, when repulsed from them, they were content to use them as shelters for their bivouacs, the flames of which soon communicated to the buildings, and the soldiers with which they were crowded, already half dead with cold, were completely destroyed by fire. At Joŭpranoui, some soldiers burnt a number of houses entirely to the ground, merely to get warmth for a few moments. The light of these fires attracted around them a number of miserable creatures whom the intensity of cold and pain had driven to delirium; they rushed forward to them like savages or furies, and with gnashing teeth and infernal smiles threw themselves into the flames, and perished in the midst of them in horrible convulsions. Their famished companions looked on without terror, and there were some who even drew out the mutilated and half-broiled bodies and ventured to allay their hunger with this revolting food.-History of Napoleon's Expedition to Russia: by Count de Segur, one of his generals. INFLUENCES OF THE MILITARY PROFESSION. LOOK also at the influence upon individuals- and this is another test to which the profession should be brought. The soldier is often left in idleness. His almost unparalleled exertions are followed by a long and unbroken period of listlessness and unoccupied time. He is subjected to the influences which most dispose towards whatever is dangerous, vicious, or degrading to human nature. The utter ignorance of the many, the partial cultivation of the few, and the worse than questionable discipline, in a moral view, of all, cannot but render indolence in them unusually rank in the foul crops which are its natural growth. He cannot but contract some hardness of feeling and character. The finer emotions of humanity will often be lost. The destruction of human life by wholesale will become a cool calculation, and having driven four or five thousand people into a river, may pass into a pleasantry. The effect of familiarity with scenes of blood and desolation, eventually extends itself far beyond the sphere of actual conflict. The scenes of cruelty and atrocity that are sometimes practised,-the fierce breaking loose of military passion which, every now and then, especially after it has been arrested beyond a time which was thought endurable, shows itself in massacre; these cannot but leave traces, indelible traces, on the moral being. The deception, the patronage of deception, the employing all arts and artifices to deceive an enemy; these break down that principle of truth which is the vitality of morals. To a large extent licenciousness and dissoluteness of life characterise all ranks of an army. In peace this evil is mitigated; but as the effect of a state of war on the morality of the profession was exhibited during the last contest, its members were rendered less and less acceptable in that intercourse with families which they enjoyed at the commencement. The same cause in the lower ranks of soldiers leads to the propensities and habits that, on the return of peace, break forth in crime. It has been long remarked, although at first the phenomenon was not understood, that the first two or three years of peace, after a continuance of war, show a most extraordinary increase in the number of criminals. The observation is as old as Machiavel, that war makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows. When we take the whole aggregate of influences bearing upon the class in question, we cannot but apprehend that such a mass of unfavourable circumstances has scarcely a parallel. "This is a sorry sight," said the ambitious thane, looking at his bloody hands; but it is a far sorrier sight to contemplate the deeper stains upon human nature which are produced by the continued action of the causes to which the military profession is exposed. We may further try it by its incidental effects on society, and on public interests. Whatever is injurious in its tendency in these directions, has so far a tincture of immorality. Now as to the effect on villages, or small towns, of the permanent residence of the military, has there ever been more than one testimony borne? Has it not always been represented as forming a dense nucleus, a pestiferous centre, of immorality? Have we not heard of aching hearts which were blithe and glad once, before this curse came over them? Have we not always heard of corruption of manners, of men's attention drawn from their honest though toilsome pursuits, and throughout the different classes of society, of various species of vice becoming prominent, which in that vicinity had been altogether unknown, or which, when they did here and there show themselves, were sure to be repressed and crushed by the right feeling of a neighbourhood? And if we look to the nation at large, what must be the effect on the tone of public opinion of a large class of men who have an interest, to them the strongest interest in a state of warfare? What, but that a love of war will be likely to characterise the nation itself? Besides those who are immediately and professionally interested, there are the families with which they are connected; the families who look to the army as a provision for their junior branches, and who are anxious to render it as beneficial a provision as possible. There is, in addition to these, all that class of persons engaged in commercial and mercantile concerns, who by loans, contracts, or temporary monopolies, reap from war pecuniary advantages. So that by the mere existence of the military profession, and the necessary concomitants of its existence, we trace the creation of a large, and powerful, and permanent war-party in the country, addicted to war for its own sake, or at least for nothing in addition to that but the advantages to be reaped by themselves and their connexions. Is not this a dreadful evil? Is not this a perverting power over the nation's good, that tends towards public immorality as gross as any private immorality which we have been describing. The conclusion in my own mind, is decidedly that the military profession is inconsistent with the principles of Christianity, and the dictates of pure morality.-W. J. Fox. [What then? Of what consequence is Christianity, or morality, compared with the possession of property to find occasion for war; of what worth that possession, unless acquired at the expense of another's well-being, unless the tears and blood of the poor cement the walls of proprietors?] |