DEMOTE S' THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY a3>\.S> B’nai B’rith Library of Jewish Literature Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Alternates https://archive.org/details/replytotwoletterOOsadl REPLY TO THE TWO LETTERS JOHN ELLIOT DRINKWATER, ESQUIRE, AND ALFRED POWER, ESQUIRE, FACTORY COMMISSIONERS, &c. &c. BY MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER, F.R.S. » “ I am solicited, not by a few, And those of true condition, that your subjects Are in great grievance. There have been Commissions Sent down among ’em, which have flaw’d the heart Of all their loyalties. The King our master, (Whose honour heav’n shield from all soil) escapes not Language unmannerly.” Shakspeare. LEEDS: PRINTED BY F. E. BINGLEY AND CO., TIMES OFFICE. 1833. S a.\ 5r- j ♦ - . - , l > • - :* J ■ . • i JOHN ELLIOT DRINKWATER AND ALFRED POWER, ESQUIRES, COMMISSIONERS, &c. Gentlemen, Your two letters, severally delivered to me on Sunday evening, have been published some days, to which it was not my inten¬ tion to have offered a single word in reply, as I felt quite willing to leave the only points of the dispute upon which the public can feel the least interest, even as stated by your¬ selves : and it is now only in compliance with the earnest wish of others, that I deviate from this resolution. Yourselves full- confirming my two declarations, namely, that you would neither permit the inquiry which you are pursuing to be open, nor yet allow its proceedings to be taken down in full, with a view to their future publication ; you have nevertheless contrived to turn an important public controversy, into a mere personal dispute, which I confess I am the more surprised at, as you both announce that your time is so deeply occupied. You severally assert, first: that I was acting in your eyes, and that “ I knew it,” as a private individual; and you affect to doubt that I was entrusted by the operatives’ committee, with the management of their cause. Second. You deny that I urged upon you open and public proceedings. I simply contradict both your statements. In con junction with other friends, I was formally appointed by the unanimous vote of the Ten Hours’ Bill Committee, conveye* d to me in writing, to the duty which I attempted to undertake in your presence. I admit that you also invited me to the meeting, and upon what other than public grounds, I am really at a loss to divine ; though I can assure you I should have been less anxious to attend had I had no other “ pretext.” OOQ91 f ' is ' \ J ?' '*.> ' A 9 4 But being thus, at once selected, both by the operatives and yourselves, what can be your reason for now representing me as a mere private and unauthorized individual, you best know. Your ideas appear to me to be somewhat misplaced, or, as Mr. Drinkwater is pleased to say of me, your “ imagina¬ tions are highly excited.” As ambassadors to foreign powers, perhaps a formal production and interchange of credentials, might have been necessary, but for you, gentlemen, to expect those formalities, is somewhat outre. I should have presumed that you knew far better that I was, and had long been “ en¬ trusted” with the wishes and intentions of the operatives on the important subject of your inquiry, than I did your recent indi¬ vidual appointments as factory commissioners; though, let me remind you, that no formal recognition took place on either side. But I ask you, gentlemen, what would the public think of me, if I had, after a mutually appointed interview, asserted and pub¬ lished, that I did not know that you had a public duty intrusted to you, but that I only took you, and you “ knew it,” for private individuals ? But gentlemen, you repeat so frequently, and appa¬ rently with such an air of triumph, not to say insult, that I am now merely a private individual, in respect to this great measure, that I conceive you think this to be a sure mode of annoying me ; if so, I assure you, you greatly mistake. If I had any strong feelings upon that head, I might satisfy myself with doubting whether, with all your assumed importance, it is yet in your power to reduce me to the position of a private individual, in reference to the Ten Hours’ Bill; and I perhaps may be excused in reminding you that you owe your own public existence on this occasion, to the individual whom you thus very gratuitously attempt to degrade. But, gentlemen, this is really wretched trifling!—Are the arguments I urged in favour of open dealing and faithful pub¬ lication in this most momentous matter one jot the better or the worse in the judgment of the public, to whom we have now mutually appealed, whether you are pleased to recognize me as representing the operatives, or as being a private indi¬ vidual, admitted to your presence merely by your indulgence ? But secondly ; you deny that I urged upon you open and public proceedings. You are again in error; if you had said o that from the first you decided against that course, you had been correct; but that I never adverted to such a proposition is, I assure you, another of your mistakes. You, Mr. Power, do not scruple to insinuate, that no person in the room, with the exception of myself, was aware that it was for one moment in contemplation. You have probably been made sensible, ere this, how incorrect is your statement. But I shall not follow your example in disputing your intentional veracity. I admit that I was so overborne by numbers, and sometimes by noise, that you might not have distinctly heard or perfectly recollected the fact; and you will remember, that one of you apologised for the great majority of the mill owners in that meeting; and, by the way, I may ask you, why you offered a word of explanation on that head, if you had not at the very time recog¬ nised my friends and myself as the representatives of the opera¬ tive party ? I have already said that you were so averse from the open course, that I found it useless long to press it, and therefore went on to the second proposition, that of having a full and faithful record of all the proceedings, with the greater f zeal , 5 because the denial of the former, in limine, had rendered that last and only remaining security doubly necessary. But, I repeat, you are altogether in error when you state that I did not advert to the first proposition distinctly and repeatedly. The dispute, however, is not of the slightest moment: both of you assert that you would not have acceded to it, in whatever manner that proposition had been made to you. Is not this, then, gentlemen, I a second time ask you, wretched trifling ? Think you that the public care one straw at what moment, or in what manner, the request was made—whether, as Mr. Power says, “ not very creditable to my diplomacy,” or not at all ? The only question in which they are concerned is, whether it was just and necessary that the inquiry should be open or not; and they now hear from yourselves, individually, that you would not allow it so to be conducted. Whatever was the demerit of my “ diplomacy,” or the superiority of yours, the fact is, that the public is hoodwinked and distrusted—outwitted and insulted by your decision. As to the proposition of recording the proceedings precisely and fully, you admit that I contended with “considerable zeal” 6 on that point, but still, you are forced to allow, with no better success. I had not the good fortune to satisfy you on either proposition. My reasons for the latter demand were numerous and sufficient. I have already partly stated them. Many others were then, and still are, present in my mind, some of which have been since presented to you by other friends of the Ten Hours’ Bill, who, notwithstanding your misrepresent¬ ations, will not consent to become the one or two (four or two, Mr. James Wilson has it) whom, after our long discussion, you would have conceded should be present, on certain occasions only ; they too refused your proposition, and you are in pos¬ session of their reasons also. Will you then please to say who are the disinterested friends of the Ten Hours’ Bill who sanction your proceedings ? You, Mr. Drinkwater, may recollect that, among other reasons which you gave against a full record of the evidence and proceedings was, that they would be far too voluminous to publish in full. I think you observed that your division of this polypus Commission had already in manuscript as much as would, if printed, equal in bulk the Report of the late Select Committee, though you were then obvi¬ ously only just entering upon the thick of the inquiry. I understood you to argue from this the necessity of select¬ ing and abridging your evidence, as your predecessor, the Poor Law Commission, has taken the liberty of doing. Now this also is a power to which, when unchecked, I most particularly object; it leaves far too much to the bias of a man’s mind, however fairly disposed. It was enough, I think, to have the opportunity of selecting the witnesses in your own hands, too much to be permitted to examine them in private; but that you should also have the power of abridging and selecting the evidence for publication, without check or control, is really monstrous. It is not, gentlemen, for nothing that the law of evi¬ dence demands the “ whole truth,” as well as the “ truth,” other¬ wise the purposes of deception might be, and often are, quite as well secured by imperfect and garbled statements as by downright falsehoods. Besides, I have been told (whether truly or other¬ wise, your mode of proceeding will allow no one to judge), that you occasionally prefer to put down the evidence of the opera¬ tives and others in your own words rather than in theirs. Be this as it may, I have the utmost objection to this percolation of evidence, if I may so speak; as the public and yourselves might possibly differ as to that which ought to be regarded as the refuse of the inquiry. Under such circumstances, any report you may make will but too probably smack of the system to which you are known to be attached,—as the spirits produced by a band of illicit distillers takes its flavour from the materials that have been selected, and the alembic through which they have passed. But you, (Mr. Power,) I am sorry to perceive, take great umbrage at my affecting to “ distrust” (as you are pleased to express yourself) your minutes of evidence, and you add, in the heroic style :—“ Now, sir, on what ground do you insinuate the probability of unfairness in me, I claim individually to know! ” Sir, I have already told you why I would not trust any man, having to conduct a public inquiry, with the power you claim to exercise; and I see no reason why, at your com¬ mand, I should be obliged to add personal objections to those public ones which I had already said are to me insuperable; if, however, I suppress individual objections in this case, it is, I assure you, simply out of courtesy to you ; your own letter abun¬ dantly supplies me with them, both as to “ your judgment and your temper;” but I forbear; one objection to yourself as an indi¬ vidual, I will, however, urge, and that merely because it bears strongly upon the point. You have, I understand, been a Poor Law Commissioner also; and, without at all impeaching your mo¬ tives, the unfair mode of arbitrarily extracting and of fraudulently indexing the evidence upon that inquiry, as now given to the pub¬ lic, however satisfactory to yourself, very much indispose me to trust the evidence upon a question which you (perhaps sarcas¬ tically,) say I am “ believed to have at heart,” to any such management. You continue thus:—“ On what ground, or by what right, do you describe me as nominated by an adverse party ? Adverse to whom ? and to what ? Am /,” &c. &c. My answer to all is simply this, because I knoiv that the party that voted you into existence as a Commissioner, and that which selected you, is adverse to the Ten Hours’ Bill. Is there a man in the kingdom, at all conversant with the subject, so stupid as not to know this? But really, Mr. Power, all this is strange ; 8 you demand to know my private sentiments about yourself, and my personal ideas as to your appointment, at the very time when you are acting the zealot, in excluding the people and the press from the knowledge of your official, and what ought to be your public conduct, excepting just so far, and in such manner, as you and your associates may please to make it known. Still pursuing these mere personalities, you (the more verbose of my two correspondents,) say that the House of Com¬ mons refused to legislate upon the evidence taken before the Select Committee. This I never before heard. On the contrary, I understood that the mover of the Commission himself disclaimed the remotest idea of ultimately defeating, nay, even of long de¬ laying the bill, founded upon that evidence. The course adopted was, as I heard, proposed principally, on the ground of its being necessary to clear the characters of certain manufacturers. Upon this point, however, I can of course pretend to no accurate knowledge, nor am I concerned as to your opinion on the subject, but when you broadly assert of myself, that I was “ anxious to legislate in the first instance , without any public inquiry what¬ ever ,” I must confess I am astounded at your strange misrepre¬ sentation, or otherwise at your total ignorance upon the subject. Why, gentlemen, independant of an immense mass of published testimony, of the highest individual authority, and of the result of the labour of several public inquiries, there had been, I think, nearly Two Thousand folio pages of parliamentary evidence col¬ lected by means of inquiries, conducted by the ablest practical men of our day, on both sides the question; evidence, conse¬ quently, thoroughly sifted; two thirds of which was given upon oath, and the whole minutely recorded and published verbatim, by order of the legislature. This mass of information, melan¬ choly as it is, I should have hoped, holding the situation you at present do, you would have carefully consulted, as I did, instead of appearing to be wholly ignorant of its very existence. I know not what to make of your assertion. Is it that you positively mean to intimate, that no inquiry is worthy of the very name, but that which you are now making, or at least that it ought to be regarded as “ no public inquiry whatever ,” because it was not, like yours, conducted in private. It was not that I was anxious to legislate “ without any public inquiry 9 whatever,” as you assert, but because very much inquiry had already been made on a matter, which, in the very nature of things, required very little; that I did conceive my inquiry to have been unnecessary, yours, if you will allow me to return your own expression, is “ worse than idle.” If your report con¬ tradict the body of evidence already taken, as I have described, it will most assuredly he incorrect; if it corroborate that evi¬ dence, it will be worse than useless,—it will be irritating and expensive ; it will then have the effect of creating delay, and of inflicting injury on many deeply interested in the measure, without having answered any other purpose whatever. But I will not dwell on the mistakes scattered in various parts of your letters, but advert to the sort of summary you give of my proceedings and your own. Your words are, “ A part of the “ Commission arrives at Leeds, where you are residing: they “ receive a deputation from the operatives of the Short Time “ Committee; the Commissioners state to them their intended “ method of proceeding as afterwards propounded to yourself; the “ operatives are disposed to consider it as satisfactory to them- “ selves ; they abandon their preconceived prejudices against the “ Commission ; they deliberate upon the question of giving the “ Commission their assistance and co-operation, and come to an “unanimous decision in the affirmative. This took place on “ Tuesday night, the evening after our arrival in Leeds. On “ Wednesday morning, you attending as a private individual at- “ our own request,” &c. Here follows your account of the meeting in question. You go on afterwards to say, “ You met the Short “ Time Committee the day after you left us, denouncing our pro- “ posed method of proceeding, as involving secrecy and mystery, “ and by your influence with the operatives, aided by that of Mr. “ Oastler, you induced them to depart from the determination “ they had previously formed of assisting us in our investigation.” Now, gentlemen, I will venture to assure you that, with the exception of the information of your arrival in Leeds, and my residing here, &c., this is as false a statement (unintentionally so, of course, on your part) as was ever hazarded ; and happily the whole proceedings have been so open to proof, as not to admit of a moment’s dispute. You arrived in Leeds, you called upon me, but 1 was too unwell to receive you :—you B 10 afterwards made a call upon a friend, to whom you unfolded your intended plan of proceeding, just as you say you did to the Short Time Committee the same evening; and it is some¬ what singular, that such was your “ diplomacy,” that both equally and entirely misunderstood you, believing that your very proposition was, that your proceedings should be open ; and so strong was the impression which you made upon the former gentleman’s mind, that he fully understood you to be so desirous that the inquiry should be public, that you would even consent to hold it in the Court-House, if you did not actually make use of the very terms. That plan, however, was propounded to me. Of course the full and constant record of the proceedings would then have been beyond dispute secured ; and the principal friends of the Ten Hours’ Bill were contem¬ plating arrangements, and “ counting the cost ” of such a neces¬ sary proceeding. Under these circumstances I immediately communicated with the Committee, and, at some personal inconvenience, with other friends of the measure at a distance, and obtained their consent to pursue a somewhat different course to that agreed upon at Manchester. The operatives, at my instance , considered the proposals which I understood the Commissioners to have made, and acquiescing in my recommend¬ ation, they unanimously chose Mr. Hall, Mr. Osburn, and myself, to act for them throughout the inquiry, assigning us assistance if it were found necessary. When, however, we attended your meeting at Scarborough’s Hotel, we were astonished to find that you would not allow the proceedings to be public, nor even permit an authorised short hand writer, or any reporter what¬ ever, to record the evidence. You will not, I think, say that I did not object to the mode you proposed on that occasion. Having thus been the means of misleading the Operative Com¬ mittee regarding your proposed proceedings, I felt it, of course, my duty to explain to them your real plan, to which I expres¬ sed my decided objection; adding, nevertheless, that if they should think it better to co-operate, even under such regula¬ tions as those propounded, I would still, to the best of my power, act on their behalf. But they heard your proposed method of proceeding with the utmost aversion and disgust, and after I left them, came, I understand, to an unanimous resolution. 11 that they would not co-operate even with me, did I consent to conduct their cause in any such unfair and clandestine manner. You were very early informed of their determination, and I had no idea that you expected a letter from me in answer to your circular, till I heard so some days after; when I immedi¬ ately wrote to you ; though I cannot refrain from expressing my surprise that you should have expected any such communication, when it appears you were all the while regarding me as a mere private individual. These mere personal accusations hardly deserve my notice, nor can I think that they will obtain that of the public; they, however, incidentally serve one valuable purpose ; they fully confirm my original conviction of the absolute necessity of hav¬ ing had all proceedings in this important matter faithfully recorded : you must excuse me doubting your accuracy regard¬ ing those parts of the inquiry which you shall report con¬ cerning others; when I see such gross mistakes and mis-state¬ ments put forth (I again admit, unintentionally) respecting myself. Regarding only one interview, and so few points, you appeal to what yourselves had entered as the minutes of the proceedings of the meeting which continued for some hours, but which you had couched in a few short lines, upon which have hung more disputes than there are sentences. Mistakes of this nature having been made by you as to what occurred in your presence, I am the less surprised at the equally gross ones which you have put forth regarding my conduct in your absence, on which you say you have been “ well informed.” But I repeat, that if your information upon other points of the inquiry is of a piece with that you have published regarding myself, it will be utterly worthless. But you, Mr. Power, who think it becoming to appear thus “ well informed ” respecting the movements of a “ private individual,” and to call my com¬ munications with the humbler classes “ harangues ,” let me put to the test, whether you “ relish ” (to use your own phrase) similar conduct even when it has been provoked, and is conse¬ quently more justifiable. While I was attempting, to the best of my power, to serve the “ children’s cause,” (and I am not ashamed to confess that the evening of last Sunday was so employed), were not you carousing (as courteous a term, I hope, 12 as “ haranguing,”) at the mansion of one of the greatest spin¬ ners in this part of England, and one of the most cool, persevering, and powerful, though unquestion ably respectable, opponents of the Ten Hours’ Bill (or as Mr. Kirkman Finlay well calls it, “the children’s cause,”) in the kingdom: in other words, enjoying the marked attentions of a deeply-interested party in the very cri¬ sis of the cause now at issue before God and the country ? I have been told so from several quarters, though I could hardly credit the fact, as you spoke so much of the conduct of the judges being your model: but did ever any one hear of a judge, or even of an arbitrator, pursuing this course regarding the “prominently interested” on either side in a pending suit ? Or, gentlemen, as a Commission of Inquiry, think you such are the places in which to learn the wrongs of the long neglected and cruelly maltreated factory child ? That the doctrine is to “ distil as the dew,” from the lips of “ philanthropists,” economists, or others, some of whom have perhaps only discovered, since the factory question has been agitated, that a few minutes’ pause is necessary for the breakfast or afternoon meal of these mise¬ rable little beings, multitudes of whom have, at the price of health, liberty, and often life itself, incessantly laboured to fabricate these newly-acquired and enormous fortunes ;—infinitely less for¬ tunate they, than the poor insect which dies when it has spun the cocoon which is to give splendour to fashion and decoration to beauty. The scenes where “ the glasses sparkle on the board and the wine shines ruby bright,” are not exactly the arena for what Mr. Power calls his “ struggles after truth.” Who could recollect, amidst such enjoyments, bodily and mental, the slow decline, the hopeless disease, the incurable deformity, (inflicted by the rack of protracted labour), the waste of human existence, in a word, the “ murderous system,” as the press truly calls it, by which they have been too often purchased ? or such things may be remembered for a moment, to be disputed, or extenuated, or com¬ pared with other sufferings, or balanced by what Mr. Power, in his manuscript letter to me, calls the “ bearings ” of the question. The school to which I understand he belongs has been rarely at a loss on this subject. Meantime, Mr. Power, if you had taken your fee and chosen your company without adverting in the sarcastic manner you have done, to my humbler associates and 13 more disinterested course in this great cause, (in pursuing which your letter exultingly alludes to the opposition I have to undergo, and so far gives the lie to the audacious falsehoods that have been put forth regarding my motives), I assure you I should not have troubled you with a word on such subjects, however “ well informed ” I might have been regarding them. My ideas upon the subject of Commissions and Commission¬ ers you, Mr. Power, are pleased to say, are very confused. I do not, you think, appear to know, that a “ Commission, con¬ stituted like the present, has no authority to hold an open court, and is not expected to open its proceedings.” I confess I do not. On the contrary, I think you have as much authority to hold an open court as a private one, and to examine witnesses in public as to examine them at all. I doubt indeed, whether you are authorised to administer oaths secretly; but I have little hesitation in asserting that you have no power to compel any witness to take your secret oaths, or to proceed against them for perjury if so taken falsely. I doubt your law, Mr. Power, quite as much as you despise mine. A Commission, the ultimate object of whose inquiry is, or ought to be, the protection of children, who are not legally or morally con¬ sidered free agents, is perhaps the most closely analogous to a Commission of Lunatic Inquiry, one of the main objects of which is to assist in affording legal protection to those equally, though not similarly, incapacitated to protect themselves.— And are not these inquiries open ? Indeed if I understand (and a mistake on a point of jurisprudence, would in me be venal,) that in a Chancery Commission to inquire, it has been declared a misdemeanour, to go apart into another room with either of the parties to consult; and I can hardly think it legal—fit I am sure it is not—that this Commission should examine witnesses, many of whom are interested, in private; much less call upon certain of them to answer a second or third time, upon fresh interrogatories suggested by parties in private, to the Commission. Again; did the late Boundaries’ Commission hold your doctrine, or pursue your course ? With the exception of the other Commission which you have lately enjoyed (the Poor Law Commission), and which to use your own expression I “ relish” almost as little as this, can 14 you give an instance of any Commission having a general public and permanent object, conducting its inquiries in secret ? As to those courts whose duty is the taking of evidence well and truly to try any cause or person, publicity is essential. You will find, sir, and if I recollect right, on the authority of Claren¬ don, that even the Court of the Council-Table, nay, that of the Star Chamber itself, were open; a sad mistake in the eye of cruelty and oppression in that time—hut one into which you are resolved not to fall in this. But it appears that you could not hold an open court without the power of sending such men as Mr. Oastler aud Mr. Richardson to the House of Correction during pleasure. The former of these, distinguished for religion and loyalty, and one of the most disinterested and intrepid cham¬ pions whom the weak and the oppressed ever found ; embued, I confess, with a degree of enthusiasm, without which no great cause ever was, or ever will be, achieved; I understand you had already branded with “ blasphemy,” and “ sedition.” The other, whose delight and business it is to do good to the utmost of his humble means, you have thus publicly stigmatized, for expressions which you have construed personally, though such an application was, I understand, expressly disclaimed; and, as the climax of such behaviour, you now say that you could not have held an open court without the privilege of committing the devoted friends of the cause to the House of Correction “ during pleasure.” What sort of a cause then is yours in the estimation of the public ? Respecting myself, I have never projected any meeting, or written or dictated a single document on the subject, since you arrived among us, except the Protest I sent to you, the expressions in which one of you confesses did not transgress ‘Those exact limits, that just verge of courtesy,” which he allows I had “preserved on this occasion.” Still, gentlemen, you have not spared to address me in most discourteous terms, and have thrown back, with apparent contempt, the assurances of “ per¬ sonal respect and consideration” which I sincerely expressed. I confess all this astonishes me, especially as I understand you belong to a profession which has a sort of conventional, and (though I do not exactly understand it) I trust real morality, which allows its members to undertake, and often with the greatest apparent zeal, the most suspicious causes; without at all attend- ing to their merits ; much less allowing them to interfere with their personal feelings or principles : and who are, moreover, not always very guarded when pursuing their professional duties, respecting the private and personal feelings of others. I say, it does appear strange to me that, as lawyers, you are deter¬ mined to construe our zealous opposition to your cause, your public proceedings, and your official regulations, into matter of personal offence. You have somewhat ungraciously intimated, that those whom you call my most zealous and respectable partizans (no very complimentary phrase) have determined to pursue an opposite course from myself; that the most respectable and well-dis¬ posed of the operatives themselves have renounced my guidance as the leader of their party ; (by the bye, how does this taunt, were it true, comport with your affected ignorance of my being entrusted with their cause, or, was other than a private indi¬ vidual ?) that you are receiving assistance from all quarters, &c. Equally erroneous in each of these as in your other statements, I will, however, only notice the last. I can assure you that many of those whom you denominate as the most respectable and well-disposed (and I know not why you should make dis¬ tinctions among those of whom you know so little, to the evident disparagement of the rest,) who have appeared before you, have previously consulted me, down to the very last who has just been with you. These I have invariably recommended, as I told you previously, to go before you and to speak the whole truth, but not to mix themselves up with your secret and decep- tious proceedings. I will just add that, in my conversations with several of these since, I have been assured that they gathered, either from your words or manner, or both, that you were quite friendly to the Ten Hours’ Bill, and that your inquiry would more than confirm the evidence of the Select Committee of the House of Commons. Gentlemen, you best know whether you have taken this course with them or not, or have been as unintelligible in their case as in the others to which I have alluded. Time will shew. But should it prove so, as I sincerely hope it may, still allow me to say that I shall ever oppose, upon principle, all manner of secret inquiries on matters deeply affecting the interests of the people at large. I will only 1(3 just add, that my conduct, in reference to the Ten Hours’ Bill, upon which you descant much more largely than upon your own, was sanctioned by, and has the entire and cordial appro¬ bation of, those with and for whom I glory at all risks to act; and of that disinterested, benevolent, and truly noble person, who happily has now the measure under his care—I mean Lord Ashley, who, like myself, is “ believed to have the cause at heart.” I expressed in my last address to you my apprehension that an Eleven Hours’ Bill might be attempted, as the result of this inquiry : if, however, the enemies of the measure are driven from that project, they are not without other expedients, in pressing which they will not fail still to represent themselves as the best friends of those, the amelioration of whose condition, they have constantly opposed. Another, and a very favourite plan of cer¬ tain opposing mill-owners, and one which was proposed to myself, will, perhaps, be next suggested; namely, to carry the protec¬ tion required only to a certain age, say twelve or fourteen years, which regulation it is calculated would well enough suit the purposes of certain employers; as in some pursuits, the very little living machines, it is found, are hardly so profitable to work as the rather bigger ones. Hence the very same people who could not determine, in thirty years’ time, that fifteen hours’ labour and confinement daily, in a cotton or flax mill, was at all injurious, (rather the contrary,) will all at once out-bid the oldest and most zealous friends of the factory chil¬ dren, and say that six or eight are fully enough; that is, if they can effect by this sort of scheme a horrible compromise which would leave the children, at the period of life which best suits their purpose, to the tender mercies of their unmitigated system, deprived of the nation’s sympathies, and consequently without either relief or hope: the age in question being, nevertheless, that of their rapid physical development, when if the slightest reliance can be placed upon the unanimous opinion of the heads of the medical profession, the human, and especially the female , constitution, demands the greatest care and attention, and when excessive labour and cruel treatment would be the most seriously injurious. Recommend, gentlemen, as strongly as you please the remission of the hours of labour in 17 early childhood, propose eight, six, or four hours if you see good, and let that portion of the press, (thank God it is but a miser¬ able part of that mighty engine, which has done so nobly in this righteous cause,) which but a very short time ago could see no evil in working children eleven hours a day, now suddenly turn round and plead for six or eight only, thus, though varying the means, still steadily and consistently labouring to serve the same end,—the cause of the “prominently interested .” But still we shall continue to demand that the young and rising generation beyond that age shall not be laboured longer than the adult artisan consents, or the felon and the slave is com¬ pelled to toil; in short, that no manufacturer shall be permitted to do what I rejoice to think many of them would shudder to con¬ template,—work the children of the poor of any age, or of either sex, to death. That constant and sufficient protection which selfishness itself affords to the labouring animals during the period of their growth, humanity will surely not deny to the unpro¬ tected youth of the country. The Ten Hours’ Bill is, I repeat, at the very least, a Twelve hours’ bill, including necessary refreshment; and an act that would consign the tender youth of the country to thirteen or fourteen hours of labour and confine¬ ment would, to all intents and purposes, be the opposing Mill- Owners’, and not the Operatives’ Bill ; and I think it would be hardly proper to take lessons of humanity, at least on this subject, and on this occasion, from their school. Certain of your instructions, I see, indicate the idea of a system of infant “ relays.” Relays !—The very term is disgusting ; “the com- u parison between the management of human creatures and that “ of cattle is,” as Hume says, “ shocking ! ” But even in any such comparison, the physical condition of the infantile labourer, under the “ relay ” system, would sink infinitely below that of the brute. Besides, were such a plan even proper or practicable in itself, it would open a door to those perpetual and cruel evasions of the law, whether on the part of masters or of parents, against which no enactments could effectually guard; so that the “ last state ” of the poor factory child would be “ worse than the first.” Lastly, a bill founded upon any such principle would operate practically as the heaviest curse upon the adults, who would then have to work against two or more “ relays,” c 18 rendering their condition absolutely intolerable. It would con¬ sign them, especially in indifferent times, to a term of daily toil far longer than they have in ordinary cases yet endured, giving them the alternative of being worked to death, or starved to death ; a condition in which, however, they would have the satisfaction of being still denominated “ free agents.” But attempt such a measure, and, without professing the gift of prophecy, I venture to prognosticate that a struggle will com¬ mence which every friend of humanity and his country will have to deprecate. Your co-commissioner, Dr. Loudon, to whom equally with yourselves I addressed my letter, has not joined you in replying, which I do not impute to him as any neglect, as he is certainly full as busy as you describe yourselves to be, having the whole of the medical part of the question upon his hands, which, not¬ withstanding your inquiries as to the bearings ” of the system upon those “prominently interested ,” is unquestionably that upon which every man in the country worthy of the name of man will decide. The main question is, whether the system, as now pursued, is injurious to the growth, destructive to the health, and fatal to the life itself, of multitudes of human victims in the beginning of their days ; and not whether Mr. this, or Mr. that, may get twenty thousand per annum, or only two thirds, or half of that sum, by those infant “ gangs ” which the legislature of England, to its eternal disgrace, has too long trusted to his “ tender mercies.” From the slight observations I made, I cannot conceive that Dr. Loudon is quite satisfied with this wretched job, at least as it is now conducted. But he has put forth a string of medical questions (doubtless under the direction of the central board), in number one hundred and four , to which he has requested replies by the tenth instant, an interval of ten or twelve days at farthest: several of these queries are indeed absurdly irrelevant, not to say worse; but others are of the most complicated nature, and some requiring series of tabulated facts and deductions which would occupy months of the time of the most intelligent and experienced of the profession to make up satisfactorily. One of your medical commissioners. Dr. Hawkins has written a work on medical statistics, (in which by the bye, the greatest possible mistake occurs, on a subject closely 19 connected with the inquiry, viz. the supposed salubrity of Man¬ chester) ; the book, a valuable one in the main, probably took him some time to write, but the labour it required was nothing in comparison to that which is thus imposed upon the medi¬ cal gentlemen, who are to answer these one hundred and four queries. I confess that when they were shewn to me by a medical gentleman of my acquaintance, serious as was the subject, I could not refrain joining in the laugh at the broad farce of such an inquiry; any man who had a character either to gain or to lose, we concurred in thinking, must feel himself otherwise than complimented by having these queries put into his hand, and being required to return his answers as soon as he would to an assessed tax paper. Nobody, we thought, but an astrological doctor would choose to attempt it. There may be some solemn individuals here and there who may, with a sort of oracular wisdom, give their extemporaneous re¬ sponses; but I think, not many, nor satisfactorily. We have an individual in this place, who without any disparagement to the rest of the profession, stands preeminently at its head, and is fully entitled to that distinction both from his talents, attain¬ ments, and experience, not to mention his hereditary celebrity. Were any one here qualified to give a sort of instanter answer to these queries, it were he : and I confess I shall be curious to see in the promised published report of the Commissioners, how he treats the request. I venture again to state that the full and deliberate opinions of many of the ablest men in the profession, long intimately conversant with the system and its consequences, are upon record, both as published by themselves and put forth on the authority of parliament. These will give more insight into the subject than a very short visit to a very well prepared factory, or a collection of hasty answers, (if any be given,) to the long list of queries alluded to. These medical queries, however, hardly match in absurdity the civil ones, which I have also just seen. The whole excite in my mind feelings which it is with difficulty I refrain from expressing. Gentlemen, the Commissioners are naturally very sensitive on the subject of possible prepossessions on this question, though, if report speak true, some of you (I do not mean the Leeds section) had prejudged it, even before your appointment. It is 20 said, that all of you are not quite disconnected with a periodical in which a most hostile article upon the Factory Question was very opportunely put forth. The misstatements that article contains regarding myself, I do not think it worth while to notice ; but the arguments (if they are deserving of the name) against the cause which I had warmly espoused long before I had a seat in parliament, I will just advert to, for the briefest possible notice of them will, I think, suffice; simply premising, that the very same school which a short time ago represented the factory system as a sort of paradise restored, now all at once depicts it in colours sufficiently dark, taking care, however, to assign its evils to causes which they know are, for the present at least, not likely to be suddenly removed. They therefore take merit for a wondrous deal of sympathy on the occasion, and still do their utmost to renew the mill-owners’ patent for the unrestricted use of these little human machines, for another long and profitable term of years. For what themselves describe as hardly less than infanticide, (if I recollect right, for it is some time since I read the article), corn laws, currency, debt, tax¬ ation, foreign competition, &c. are to apologize. Without venturing a single argument on these topics one way or other, I would just remark, in reference to the two first assumed causes of infantile oppression, that the distress, degradation, and morta¬ lity attendant on the system, as described by Drs. Perceval, Ferrier, Aikin, Simmons, and others, were, at the very least, quite as appalling, when, in point of fact, corn laws were a dead letter, and, before the currency had been disturbed, as they are at the present moment. As to debts and taxation, look to America! The apologists of the system in England appeal to the practice of overworking children there, and I fear with too much truth; I am happy to say, however, that the sympathies of that great and growing people are beginning to be roused to the subject : in the mean time, debt and taxation cannot be the cause of such crimes in the United States. Lastly; as to com¬ petition, I have the gratification of knowing that most of those countries which are represented to us as our most formidable rivals, at least as respects the manufactures of this district, most effectually guard their poor children from the fate to which they are too often doomed in this rich and enlightened country,—at 21 least up to the period of confirmation (which is not usually early in those states), by absolutely requiring that they shall be daily sent to school and educated, instead of being worked to death. But away with all such false and insulting apologies ; the fact is, that avarice will overreach, power will enslave, and wealth oppress, the weak and the defenceless, in every country, and under all circumstances, except the laws, “ the principal object of which ought to be,” as Paley says, “ the care of the poor,” interfere, and give the force of human authority to the dictates of nature and of God. This letter is already much too long, nevertheless I will tres¬ pass a little further, in order to notice a point or two in the letter of your central secretary, Mr. Wilson, who at so great a distance comes in to your aid in this controversy. The common adage of “ save me from my friends,” was never more applicable than in this instance. The Commission, which this gentleman per¬ haps knows, was urged upon the house for the alleged purpose of clearing the character of the masters, makes one of its most material secret regulations for a purpose as expounded by him, which conveys the deepest imputation upon them, as a body, ever hazarded. But I can hardly admit Mr. Wilson’s opportune comment upon these newly produced rules ; for this plain reason, it is quite irreconcilable with the answer you repeatedly gave when pressed on the very subject, namely, the means of protec¬ tion and indemnity for the witnesses of the operatives. This you candidly acknowledged to be the great difficulty; confessing at the same time that you had no satisfactory suggestion to offer in relation to it. But Mr. Wilson tells the public that this difficulty had been already anticipated and obviated, and men¬ tions concealment of names as well as secrecy of proceedings, as being an essential feature of this inquiry, in order to screen the poor operatives from those vindictive consequences, which have been, up to this hour, constantly denied. Mr. Wilson, when driven to his next shift in defending these close proceed¬ ings, will perhaps say, that the depositions and cross-examina¬ tions of the witnesses, too many of whom can neither read nor write, may be submitted to and signed by them ; and when he has obviated the little inconveniences so implied, he will perhaps next explain how his anonymous witnesses are to sign. Oh the difficulties these secret “ struggles after truth” involve ! But to return, his present exposition hardly squares with the proceedings of the Commissioners. You are in constant communication with the masters, who furnish suggestions for cross-examination, as I am assured by one of the witnesses, who has this instant called upon me, stating with deep, and I think just indignation, that he has consequently been subjected a second time to a rigorous cross- examination, “but who,” says he, “will thus cross-examine again “ and again, the masters and those who appear against us, as we “ shall neither know who they are nor what they have said.” And yet this is the plan, which your personal respectability is to recommend to us. Mr. Wilson may argue as he pleases, but he may rest assured that whatever be the inconveniences, with a view even to ultimate protection, there is no course like fair, open, public proceedings, none else can be so effectual, if a righteous cause has to be recommended to the British people. It is a course also, which the operatives have a right to demand and have demanded in vain. One word more regarding Mr. Wilson : he says, “ n . b . The notes of this unknown short hand writer were to become the joint property of the Commissioners and of the Ten Hour Committee.” Now I distinctly proposed, nor do you deny it, that the short hand writer should be “ im¬ partially chosen, or appointed by yourselves, and duly sworn, ” it was said also in answer to the objections of a mill-owner, that his minutes might remain in your custody till the end of the inquiry. “ Unknown” short hand writer! Was ever such a mis-statement made as this gentleman has ventured to put forth ? Mr. Wilson had better refrain from meddling further with the local controversy ; if that be a department of his duty, he has quite as much as he can manage in his correspondence with the Lancashire deputies, in which he cuts no very enviable figure. Gentlemen, I regret that one word of personal controversy has passed between us, nor am I aware that I have in the slightest degree provoked it; nay, one of you, who “ presses upon my consciousness a very reasonable distrust ” of myself, acknow¬ ledges my courtesy, if I exactly understand his phraseology. I can assure you, that if I were conscious of having unnecessa¬ rily wounded your feelings, it would add to those deep and painful anxieties which have hitherto accompanied my advocacy 23 of this sacred cause,—a cause, however, which I shall never desert while it may demand my feeble assistance, or I shall have the power of rendering it, I had hoped that you were sensible of the mistakes into which you have been inadvertently betrayed, in which case I feel confident you would have acknowledged them, when this rejoinder would have been cheerfully suppressed. That not being the case, it has been thought that I had no alternative but that of answering your letters, especially as it is conceived the points at issue between us, when divested of all unnecessary personalities, involve a great national principle, highly important in itself, and which has deeply interested the country, namely, whether all inquiries having a public object, and conducted at the public expense, especially such as have to determine the truth of former evidence, or collect additional and authentic information, shall be openly conducted, or at least have their proceedings fully and faithfully recorded. I have the honor to be, with all due respect. Gentlemen, Your most obedient Servant, MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. Leeds, 5tli June , 1833 . P. S. In estimating in a preceding page (the 8th) the evidence on the Factory Question, at about two thousand folio pages, that printed for the use of preceding Select Committees, but not published, was inadvertently included. The evidence published by order of the two houses, extends to above twelve hundred pages, about two-thirds of which was upon oath ; which, with that taken before the late Select Committee, makes the whole so pub¬ lished to amount, I think, to upwards of two thousand folio pages. : fi.'db oil i ' r * (.ainioiii ©il/ fj's' oi SVB 1 J 4 jii-i *i i'feoro .. ■,? -• *•> t **y& ,cv,^r^L; i i 93 |I 37 wf ;kV* if:, if;/ c ■ r r vr. I.I.;oir-rr* ll j* ■ ’I i • 9xl‘ n •:$:! &v ' * r n’ - •* ; > ill* : d k ii , 3 ?.bd * Ai ijna •• ^ • *. n > J L i 1 F. E. BINGLEY & CO. PRINTERS, TIMES-OFFICE, LEEDS. r _ Oi.'i vo toJ^..> ^ l xYi' ’ .•; > ■fi.; l: ' V *iO f&V U-flv.j h: .'. r .! ;-< r v 4 •/: OUi i ** 1 :q Oil • ill „ »„ - ::.'.U«anI . 8/1 nr?i;oit cv;i Jne