yet Liverpool, not a manufacturing town, with every advantage of acclivity to a mighty estuary, with transparent atmosphere, with municipal opulence, reckons against the 20 deaths of children at Leeds, no fewer than 60; and Bath opposes to the same number 32 deaths. These are children of the first class: but also to 2245 deaths of servants in Leeds, Liverpool gives 4004. The Wiltshire Unions furnish as large a rate of deaths in particular ages between 10 and 20 years, as the reputedly shortest lived town in the kingdom. But examine that town. If manufacture be the cause of its mortality, all parts of it will nearly be the same. But there is a discrepancy in different wards of one death to the whole population

in 23, and of one to 36. That locality has much to do with it is evident, for the proportion of deaths in the environs of the Metropolis, and of Manchester and Leeds, is less than among the highest classes in two of the agricultural counties.* Allowance is, of course, to be made in the above estimates for the relative size of the towns and their respective populations.

There are adverse propositions offered by certain theorists,- one tells us that it would be no loss to the country if every factory were swallowed up, and another, a poetaster, cares not what be wrecked so that our old nobility be saved. This may be a very lofty and generous vein. In the mean while, a serious

*

Report on the Sanitary Condition of the Labouring Class, &c.

business remains : a people must be fed. The question is not, what might be best in other circumstances; but, what is to be done in ours? The manufacturing districts are constantly increasing in population. In 1811 the agricultural population were as 352 in the 1000 of the whole. In 1821 they decreased to 332. In 1831 they declined to 281. Calculating by the same ratio, in 1861 they will be reduced to 175. The manufacturing population had multiplied proportionately on one-third of the area of the country. They are now, in that narrow space, 54 per cent. of the entire population; while, on the other two-thirds, the agricultural population is only 46 per cent. out of the whole. In the manufacturing seats, the poor-rates are only 4s. 10d. per head, while in the agricultural they are 7s. 10d. Here is, then, the refuge for what otherwise would be a superfetate population. And yet this is the system to be swept away! What would be the condition of the farming counties if all who claimed settlement in them were driven back upon them! What would be the sustentation of the labourer if all the crowded regions of manufacture were thinned of those who did not belong to them by birthright, and only rural occupation was left! What would be the indescribable disproportion of labour to hands, and of food to mouths, if there were an equable dispersion and distribution of the population over the soil, and nothing but its tillage spared for their reward!

The invective against the Factory, against its encroachment upon the retreats of Nature, against its wild disturbance of her quiet and sacrilegious profanation of her sanctity, -setting itself amidst woodland and lake, by dingle and river,-might but amuse. Wordsworth and Whitaker can rail in good round terms. Poet and Antiquarian stint not phrase nor temper.

But Prejudice has blindly assailed the manufacturing system of the kingdom. One of the chief charges against it is, its infant labour. This is accused as the reason of such frequent early deaths. Yet the figure, however large, of that mortality, points to ages of life long before youthful labour can commence. Such labour never did exist. Children's labour certainly does. Their probable sphere of life is that of industry, and to industry they should be trained. Their education, however scanty, depends upon the price of their industry. It may be a stern necessity. But if mechanic life be miserable, if the crowded population which it collects is degraded, may not these put in some little claim to forbearance of censure? Ought they not to be commiserated? The fabric must be produced. Not less of wool and cotton and silk are to be wrought. And yet all that is associated with human efforts, and natural agents, is to receive high and overbearing scorn! There may be doomed to live in these noisy and smoky neighbourhoods those who once sported in the mountain

breeze and on the ocean wave.

They shrunk, it may

be, when they first caught sight of their future habitation: "Is this the region, this the soil, the clime?" High purposes have made them willing to share every disadvantage of the scene. But would they have looked unmoved on cruel wrongs and truculent oppressors ? Could they be silenced? Could they be bribed? Have they not championed the claims of the child, the operative, the decrepit ? We enquire in simple wonder, how it is that the trade of manufacture must be mean, while the trade of agriculture is noble? Trade is the employment of capital in labour upon some work of God. The raw material may be flax, or it may be land. Each is the subject of change. There is the fine linen. There is the abundant harvest. The producers of food are worthy of all honour, but not more than the producers of that which gives food its social value. Food cannot of itself be riches. It is to be sold, it is to be exchanged for other commodities, and then the country is filled with plenty. We have not to cross wide seas to certify this. A country may be a granary: its hills covered with flocks, its fields waving with fruits, and yet its people famish. The money is not in the sack's mouth. That corn

must be turned into means of barter, that it may be eaten. Thus only can commonwealths become strong and great. Instead of being ashamed of factory and shop, we see in them the freight of our ships, the wealth of our colonies, the life of our commerce.

But

there is a nobler defence. The Medicean princes, the offspring of trade, scarcely were more true to literature than have been our successful traffickers. Mark the Portico and Athenæum of our towns. Observe the schools and institutions of learning. Here, too, freedom finds its favoured refuge. The law of opinion goes forth from thence and rules the land. These are the busy scenes in which principles are tested, truths discovered, and experiments assured. They may have a fault in the esteem of a constantly diminishing feudalism. It is the power which their knowledge gives it is the improvement which their inquisitiveness accelerates; it is the liberty which their intelligence demands. Extinguish the manufacturing system of your country, and even if you could yet till your land and meet your debt,-knowledge would have lost its firmest hold, and independence be driven from its noblest asylum!