The character of the Scotch universities is altogether different. There you have no functionaries resembling the Vice-Chancellors and Proctors, the Heads of Houses, Tutors and Deans, whom I used to cap at Cambridge. There is no chapel; there is no academical authority entitled to ask a young man whether he goes to the parish church or the Quaker meeting, to synagogue or to mass. With his moral conduct the university has nothing to do. The Principal and the whole Academical Senate cannot put any restraint, or inflict any punishment, on a lad whom they may see lying dead drunk in the High Street of Edinburgh. In truth, a student at a Scotch university is in a situation closely resembling that of a medical student in London. There are great numbers of youths in London who attend St George's Hospital, or St Bartholomew's Hospital. One of these youths may also go to Albermarle Street to hear Mr Faraday lecture on chemistry, or to Willis's rooms to hear Mr Carlyle lecture on German literature. On the Sunday he goes perhaps to church, perhaps to the Roman Catholic chapel, perhaps to the Tabernacle, perhaps nowhere. None of the gentlemen whose lectures he has attended during the week has the smallest right to tell him where he shall worship, or to punish him for gambling in hells, or tippling in cider cellars. Surely we must all feel that it would be the height of absurdity to require Mr Faraday and Mr Carlyle to subscribe a confession of faith before they lecture; and in what does their situation differ from the situation of the Scotch professor.

In the peculiar character of the Scotch universities, therefore, I find a strong reason for the passing of this bill. I find a reason stronger still when I look at the terms of the engagements which exist between the English and Scotch nations.

Some gentlemen, I see, think that I am venturing on dangerous ground. We have been told, in confident tones, that, if we pass this bill, we shall commit a gross breach of public faith, we shall violate the Treaty of Union, and the Act of Security. With equal confidence, and with confidence much better grounded, I affirm that the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security not only do not oblige us to reject this bill, but do oblige us to pass this bill, or some bill nearly resembling this.

This proposition seems to be regarded by the Ministers as paradoxical: but I undertake to prove it by the plainest and fairest argument. I shall resort to no chicanery. If I did think that the safety of the commonwealth required that we should violate the Treaty of Union, I would violate it openly, and defend my conduct on the ground of necessity. It may, in an extreme case, be our duty to break our compacts. It never can be our duty to quibble them away. What I say is that the Treaty of Union, construed, not with the subtlety of a pettifogger, but according to the spirit, binds us to pass this bill or some similar bill.

By the Treaty of Union it was covenanted that no person should be a teacher or office-bearer in the Scotch Universities who should not declare that he conformed to the worship and polity of the Established Church of Scotland. What Church was meant by the two contracting parties? What Church was meant, more especially, by the party to the side of which we ought always to lean, I mean the weaker party? Surely the Church established in 1707, when the Union took place. Is then, the Church of Scotland at the present moment constituted, on all points which the members of that Church think essential, exactly as it was constituted in 1707? Most assuredly not.

Every person who knows anything of the ecclesiastical history of Scotland knows that, ever since the Reformation, the great body of the Presbyterians of that country have held that congregations ought to have a share in the appointment of their ministers. This principle is laid down most distinctly in the First Book of Discipline, drawn up by John Knox. It is laid down, though not quite so strongly, in the Second Book of Discipline, drawn up by Andrew Melville. And I beg gentlemen, English gentlemen, to observe that in Scotland this is not regarded as a matter of mere expediency. All staunch Presbyterians think that the flock is entitled, jure divino, to a voice in the appointment of the pastor, and that to force a pastor on a parish to which he is unacceptable is a sin as much forbidden by the Word of God as idolatry or perjury. I am quite sure that I do not exaggerate when I say that the highest of our high churchmen at Oxford cannot attach more importance to episcopal government and episcopal ordination than many thousands of Scotchmen, shrewd men, respectable men, men who fear God and honour the Queen, attach to this right of the people.

When, at the time of the Revolution, the Presbyterian worship and discipline were established in Scotland, the question of patronage was settled by a compromise, which was far indeed from satisfying men of extreme opinions, but which was generally accepted. An Act, passed at Edinburgh, in 1690, transferred what we should call in England the advowsons from the old patrons to parochial councils, composed of the elders and the Protestant landowners. This system, however imperfect it might appear to such rigid Covenanters as Davie Deans and Gifted Gilfillan, worked satisfactorily; and the Scotch nation seems to have been contented with its ecclesiastical polity when the Treaty of Union was concluded. By that treaty the ecclesiastical polity of Scotland was declared to be unalterable. Nothing, therefore, can be more clear than that the Parliament of Great Britain was bound by the most sacred obligations not to revive those rights of patronage which the Parliament of Scotland had abolished.

But, Sir, the Union had not lasted five years when our ancestors were guilty of a great violation of public faith. The history of that great fault and of its consequences is full of interest and instruction. The wrong was committed hastily, and with contumelious levity. The offenders were doubtless far from foreseeing that their offence would be visited on the third and fourth generation; that we should be paying in 1845 the penalty of what they did in 1712.

In 1712, Sir, the Whigs, who were the chief authors of the Union, had been driven from power. The prosecution of Sacheverell had made them odious to the nation. The general election of 1710 had gone against them. Tory statesmen were in office. Tory squires formed more than five-sixths of this House. The party which was uppermost thought that England had, in 1707, made a bad bargain, a bargain so bad that it could hardly be considered as binding. The guarantee so solemnly given to the Church of Scotland was a subject of loud and bitter complaint. The Ministers hated that Church much; and their chief supporters, the country gentlemen and country clergymen of England, hated it still more. Numerous petty insults were offered to the opinions, or, if you please, the prejudices of the Presbyterians. At length it was determined to go further, and to restore to the old patrons those rights which had been taken away in 1690. A bill was brought into this House, the history of which you may trace in our Journals. Some of the entries are very significant. In spite of all remonstrances the Tory majority would not hear of delay. The Whig minority struggled hard, appealed to the act of Union and the Act of Security, and insisted on having both those Acts read at the table. The bill passed this House, however, before the people of Scotland knew that it had been brought in. For there were then neither reporters nor railroads; and intelligence from Westminster was longer in travelling to Cambridge than it now is in travelling to Aberdeen. The bill was in the House of Lords before the Church of Scotland could make her voice heard. Then came a petition from a committee appointed by the General Assembly to watch over the interests of religion while the General Assembly itself was not sitting. The first name attached to that petition is the name of Principal Carstairs, a man who had stood high in the esteem and favour of William the Third, and who had borne a chief part in establishing the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Carstairs and his colleagues appealed to the Act of Union, and implored the peers not to violate that Act. But party spirit ran high; public faith was disregarded: patronage was restored. To that breach of the Treaty of Union are to be directly ascribed all the schisms that have since rent the Church of Scotland.

I will not detain the House by giving a minute account of those schisms. It is enough to say that the law of patronage produced, first the secession of 1733 and the establishment of the Associate Synod, then the secession of 1752 and the establishment of the Relief Synod, and finally the great secession of 1843 and the establishment of the Free Church. Only two years have elapsed since we saw, with mingled admiration and pity, a spectacle worthy of the best ages of the Church. Four hundred and seventy ministers resigned their stipends, quitted their manses, and went forth committing themselves, their wives, their children, to the care of Providence. Their congregations followed them by thousands, and listened eagerly to the Word of Life in tents, in barns, or on those hills and moors where the stubborn Presbyterians of a former generation had prayed and sung their psalms in defiance of the boot of Lauderdale and of the sword of Dundee. The rich gave largely of their riches. The poor contributed with the spirit of her who put her two mites into the treasury of Jerusalem. Meanwhile, in all the churches of large towns, of whole counties, the established clergy were preaching to empty benches. And of these secessions every one may be distinctly traced to that violation of the Treaty of Union which was committed in 1712.

This, Sir, is the true history of dissent in Scotland: and, this being so, how can any man have the front to invoke the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security against those who are devotedly attached to that system which the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security were designed to protect, and who are seceders only because the Treaty of Union and the Act of Security have been infringed? I implore gentlemen to reflect on the manner in which they and their fathers have acted towards the Scotch Presbyterians. First you bind yourselves by the most solemn obligations to maintain unaltered their Church as it was constituted in 1707. Five years later you alter the constitution of their Church in a point regarded by them as essential. In consequence of your breach of faith secession after secession takes place, till at length the Church of the State ceases to be the Church of the People. Then you begin to be squeamish. Then those articles of the Treaty of Union which, when they really were obligatory, you outrageously violated, now when they are no longer obligatory, now when it is no longer in your power to observe them according to the spirit, are represented as inviolable. You first, by breaking your word, turn hundreds of thousands of Churchmen into Dissenters; and then you punish them for being Dissenters, because, forsooth, you never break your word. If your consciences really are so tender, why do you not repeal the Act of 1712? Why do you not put the Church of Scotland back into the same situation in which she was in 1707. We have had occasion more than once in the course of this session to admire the casuistical skill of Her Majesty's Ministers. But I must say that even their scruple about slave-grown sugar, though that scruple is the laughing-stock of all Europe and all America, is respectable when compared with their scruple about the Treaty of Union. Is there the slightest doubt that every compact ought to be construed according to the sense in which it was understood by those who made it? And is there the slightest doubt as to the sense in which the compact between England and Scotland was understood by those who made it? Suppose that we could call up from their graves the Presbyterian divines who then sate in the General Assembly. Suppose that we could call up Carstairs; that we could call up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State; that we could relate to them the history of the ecclesiastical revolutions which have, since their time, taken place in Scotland; and that we could then ask them, "Is the Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with the Church which existed at the time of the Union?" Is it not quite certain what their answer would be? They would say, "Our Church, the Church which you promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church which you protect, but the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the Church of Chalmers and Brewster, not the Church of Bryce and Muir."

It is true, Sir, that the Presbyterian dissenters are not the only dissenters whom this bill will relieve. By the law, as it now stands, all persons who refuse to declare their approbation of the synodical polity, that is to say, all persons who refuse to declare that they consider episcopal government and episcopal ordination as, at least, matters altogether indifferent, are incapable of holding academical office in Scotland. Now, Sir, will any gentleman who loves the Church of England vote for maintaining this law? If, indeed, he were bound by public faith to maintain this law, I admit that he would have no choice. But I have proved, unless I greatly deceive myself, that he is not bound by public faith to maintain this law? Can he then conscientiously support the Ministers to-night? If he votes with them, he votes for persecuting what he himself believes to be the truth. He holds out to the members of his own Church lures to tempt them to renounce that Church, and to join themselves to a Church which he considers as less pure. We may differ as to the propriety of imposing penalties and disabilities on heretics. But surely we shall agree in thinking that we ought not to punish men for orthodoxy.

I know, Sir, that there are many gentlemen who dislike innovation merely as innovation, and would be glad always to keep things as they are now. Even to this class of persons I will venture to appeal. I assure them that we are not the innovators. I assure them that our object is to keep things as they are and as they have long been. In form, I own, we are proposing a change; but in truth we are resisting a change. The question really is, not whether we shall remove old tests, but whether we shall impose new ones. The law which we seek to repeal has long been obsolete. So completely have the tests been disused that, only the other day, the right honourable Baronet, the Secretary for the Home Department, when speaking in favour of the Irish Colleges Bill, told us that the Government was not making a rash experiment. "Our plan," he said, "has already been tried at Edinburgh and has succeeded. At Edinburgh the tests have been disused near a hundred years." As to Glasgow the gentlemen opposite can give us full information from their own experience. For there are at least three members of the Cabinet who have been Lords Rectors; the First Lord of the Treasury, and the Secretaries for the Home Department and the Colonial Department. They never took the test. They probably would not have taken it; for they are all Episcopalians. In fact, they belong to the very class which the test was especially meant to exclude. The test was not meant to exclude Presbyterian dissenters; for the Presbyterian Church was not yet rent by any serious schism. Nor was the test meant to exclude the Roman Catholics; for against the Roman Catholics there was already abundant security. The Protestant Episcopalian was the enemy against whom it was, in 1707, thought peculiarly necessary to take precautions. That those precautions have long been disused the three members of the Cabinet whom I mentioned can certify.

On a sudden the law, which had long slept a deep sleep, has been awakened, stirred up, and put into vigorous action. These obsolete tests are now, it seems, to be exacted with severity. And why? Simply because an event has taken place which makes them ten times as unjust and oppressive as they would have been formerly. They were not required while the Established Church was the Church of the majority. They are to be required solely because a secession has taken place which has made the Established Church the Church of the minority. While they could have done little mischief they were suffered to lie neglected. They are now to be used, because a time has come at which they cannot be used without fatal consequences.

It is impossible for me to speak without indignation of those who have taken the lead in the work of persecution. Yet I must give them credit for courage. They have selected as their object of attack no less a man than Sir David Brewster, Principal of the University of Saint Andrews. I hold in my hand the libel, as it is technically called, in which a Presbytery of the Established Church demands that Sir David, for the crime of adhering to that ecclesiastical polity which was guaranteed to his country by the Act of Union, shall be "removed from his office, and visited with such other censure or punishment as the laws of the Church enjoin, for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity of the University, and to deter others holding the same important office from committing the like offence in all time coming, but that others may hear and fear the danger and detriment of following divisive courses." Yes; for the glory of God, the safety of the Church, and the prosperity of the University. What right, Sir, have the authors of such an instrument as this to raise their voices against the insolence and intolerance of the Vatican? The glory of God! As to that, I will only say that this is not the first occasion on which the glory of God has been made a pretext for the injustice of man. The safety of the Church! Sir, if, which God forbid, that Church is really possessed by the evil spirit which actuates this Presbytery; if that Church, having recently lost hundreds of able ministers and hundreds of thousands of devout hearers, shall, instead of endeavouring, by meekness, and by redoubled diligence, to regain those whom she has estranged, give them new provocation; if she shall sharpen against them an old law the edge of which has long rusted off, and which, when it was first made, was made not for her defence, but for theirs; then I pronounce the days of that Church numbered. As to the prosperity of the University, is there a corner of Europe where men of science will not laugh when they hear that the prosperity of the University of Saint Andrews is to be promoted by expelling Sir David Brewster on account of a theological squabble? The professors of Edinburgh know better than this Presbytery how the prosperity of a seat of learning is to be promoted. There the Academic Senate is almost unanimous in favour of the bill. And indeed it is quite certain that, unless this bill, or some similar bill, be passed, a new college will soon be founded and endowed with that munificence of which the history of the Free Church furnishes so many examples. From the day on which such an university arises, the old universities must decline. Now, they are practically national, and not sectarian, institutions. And yet, even now, the emoluments of a professorship are so much smaller than those which ability and industry can obtain in other ways, that it is difficult to find eminent men to fill the chairs. And if there be this difficulty now, when students of all religious persuasions attend the lectures, what is likely to happen when all the members of the Free Church go elsewhere for instruction? If there be this difficulty when you have all the world to choose professors from, what is likely to happen when your choice is narrowed to less than one-half of Scotland? As the professorships become poorer, the professors will become less competent. As the professors become less competent, the classes will become thinner. As the classes become thinner, the professorships will again become poorer. The decline will become rapid and headlong. In a short time, the lectures will be delivered to empty rooms: the grass will grow in the courts: and men not fit to be village dominies will occupy the chairs of Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart, of Reid and Black, of Playfair and Jamieson.

How do Her Majesty's Ministers like such a prospect as this! Already they have, whether by their fault or their misfortune I will not now inquire, secured for themselves an unenviable place in the history of Scotland. Their names are already inseparably associated with the disruption of her Church. Are those names to be as inseparably associated with the ruin of her Universities?

If the Government were consistent in error, some respect might be mingled with our disapprobation. But a Government which is guided by no principle; a Government which, on the gravest questions, does not know its own mind twenty-four hours together; a Government which is against tests at Cork, and for tests at Glasgow, against tests at Belfast, and for tests at Edinburgh, against tests on the Monday, for them on the Wednesday, against them again on the Thursday—how can such a Government command esteem or confidence? How can the Ministers wonder that their uncertain and capricious liberality fails to obtain the applause of the liberal party? What right have they to complain if they lose the confidence of half the nation without gaining the confidence of the other half?

But I do not speak to the Government. I speak to the House. I appeal to those who, on Monday last, voted with the Ministers against the test proposed by the honourable Baronet the Member for North Devon. I know what is due to party ties. But there is a mire so black and so deep that no leader has a right to drag his followers through it. It is only forty-eight hours since honourable gentlemen were brought down to the House to vote against requiring the professors in the Irish Colleges to make a declaration of belief in the Gospel: and now the same gentlemen are expected to come down and to vote that no man shall be a professor in a Scottish college who does not declare himself a Calvinist and a Presbyterian. Flagrant as is the injustice with which the ministers have on this occasion treated Scotland, the injustice with which they have treated their own supporters is more flagrant still. I call on all who voted with the Government on Monday to consider whether they can consistently and honourably vote with the Government to-night: I call on all members of the Church of England to ponder well before they make it penal to be a member of the Church of England; and, lastly, I call on every man of every sect and party who loves science and letters, who is solicitous for the public tranquillity, who respects the public faith, to stand by us in this our hard struggle to avert the ruin which threatens the Universities of Scotland. I move that this bill be now read a second time.

*****



CORN LAWS. (DECEMBER 2, 1845) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT EDINBURGH ON THE 2D OF DECEMBER 1845.

The following Speech was delivered at a public meeting held at Edinburgh on the second of December, 1845, for the purpose of petitioning Her Majesty to open the ports of the United Kingdom for the free admission of corn and other food.

My Lord Provost and Gentlemen,—You will, I hope, believe that I am deeply sensible of the kindness with which you have received me. I only beg that you will continue to extend your indulgence to me, if it should happen that my voice should fail me in the attempt to address you. I have thought it my duty to obey your summons, though I am hardly equal to the exertion of public speaking, and though I am so situated that I can pass only a few hours among you. But it seemed to me that this was not an ordinary meeting or an ordinary crisis. It seemed to me that a great era had arrived, and that, at such a conjuncture, you were entitled to know the opinions and intentions of one who has the honour of being your representative.

With respect to the past, gentlemen, I have perhaps a little to explain, but certainly nothing to repent or to retract. My opinions, from the day on which I entered public life, have never varied. I have always considered the principle of protection of agriculture as a vicious principle. I have always thought that this vicious principle took, in the Act of 1815, in the Act of 1828, and in the Act of 1842, a singularly vicious form. This I declared twelve years ago, when I stood for Leeds: this I declared in May 1839, when I first presented myself before you; and when, a few months later, Lord Melbourne invited me to become a member of his Government, I distinctly told him that, in office or out of office, I must vote for the total repeal of the corn laws.

But in the year 1841 a very peculiar crisis arrived. There was reason to hope that it might be possible to effect a compromise, which would not indeed wholly remove the evils inseparable from a system of protection, but which would greatly mitigate them. There were some circumstances in the financial situation of the country which led those who were then the advisers of the Crown to hope that they might be able to get rid of the sliding scale, and to substitute for it a moderate fixed duty. We proposed a duty of eight shillings a quarter on wheat. The Parliament refused even to consider our plan. Her Majesty appealed to the people. I presented myself before you; and you will bear me witness that I disguised nothing. I said, "I am for a perfectly free trade in corn: but I think that, situated as we are, we should do well to consent to a compromise. If you return me to Parliament, I shall vote for the eight shilling duty. It is for you to determine whether, on those terms, you will return me or not." You agreed with me. You sent me back to the House of Commons on the distinct understanding that I was to vote for the plan proposed by the Government of which I was a member. As soon as the new Parliament met, a change of administration took place. But it seemed to me that it was my duty to support, when out of place, that proposition to which I had been a party when I was in place. I therefore did not think myself justified in voting for a perfectly free trade, till Parliament had decided against our fixed duty, and in favour of Sir Robert Peel's new sliding scale. As soon as that decision had been pronounced, I conceived that I was no longer bound by the terms of the compromise which I had, with many misgivings, consented to offer to the agriculturists, and which the agriculturists had refused to accept. I have ever since voted in favour of every motion which has been made for the total abolition of the duties on corn.

There has been, it is true, some difference of opinion between me and some of you. We belonged to the same camp: but we did not quite agree as to the mode of carrying on the war. I saw the immense strength of the interests which were arrayed against us. I saw that the corn monopoly would last forever if those who defended it were united, while those who assailed it were divided. I saw that many men of distinguished abilities and patriotism, such men as Lord John Russell, Lord Howick, Lord Morpeth, were unwilling to relinquish all hope that the question might be settled by a compromise such as had been proposed in 1841. It seemed to me that the help of such men was indispensable to us, and that, if we drove from us such valuable allies, we should be unable to contend against the common enemy. Some of you thought that I was timorous, and others that I was misled by party spirit or by personal friendship. I still think that I judged rightly. But I will not now argue the question. It has been set at rest for ever, and in the best possible way. It is not necessary for us to consider what relations we ought to maintain with the party which is for a moderate fixed duty. That party has disappeared. Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly. Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I pledge myself to stand firmly.

Gentlemen, a resolution has been put into my hands which I shall move with the greatest pleasure. That resolution sets forth in emphatic language a truth of the highest importance, namely, that the present corn laws press with especial severity on the poor. There was a time, gentlemen, when politicians were not ashamed to defend the corn laws merely as contrivances for putting the money of the many into the pockets of the few. We must,—so these men reasoned,—have a powerful and opulent class of grandees: that we may have such grandees, the rent of land must be kept up: and that the rent of land may be kept up, the price of bread must be kept up. There may still be people who think thus: but they wisely keep their thoughts to themselves. Nobody now ventures to say in public that ten thousand families ought to be put on short allowance of food in order that one man may have a fine stud and a fine picture gallery. Our monopolists have changed their ground. They have abandoned their old argument for a new argument much less invidious, but, I think, rather more absurd. They have turned philanthropists. Their hearts bleed for the misery of the poor labouring man. They constantly tell us that the cry against the corn laws has been raised by capitalists; that the capitalist wishes to enrich himself at the expense both of the landed gentry and of the working people; that every reduction of the price of food must be followed by a reduction of the wages of labour; and that, if bread should cost only half what it now costs, the peasant and the artisan would be sunk in wretchedness and degradation, and the only gainers would be the millowners and the money changers. It is not only by landowners, it is not only by Tories, that this nonsense has been talked. We have heard it from men of a very different class, from demagogues who wish to keep up the corn laws, merely in order that the corn laws may make the people miserable, and that misery may make the people turbulent. You know how assiduously those enemies of all order and all property have laboured to deceive the working man into a belief that cheap bread would be a curse to him. Nor have they always laboured in vain. You remember that once, even in this great and enlightened city, a public meeting called to consider the corn laws was disturbed by a deluded populace. Now, for my own part, whenever I hear bigots who are opposed to all reform, and anarchists who are bent on universal destruction, join in the same cry, I feel certain that it is an absurd and mischievous cry; and surely never was there a cry so absurd and mischievous as this cry against cheap loaves. It seems strange that Conservatives, people who profess to hold new theories in abhorrence, people who are always talking about the wisdom of our ancestors, should insist on our receiving as an undoubted truth a strange paradox never heard of from the creation of the world till the nineteenth century. Begin with the most ancient book extant, the Book of Genesis, and come down to the parliamentary debates of 1815; and I will venture to say that you will find that, on this point, the party which affects profound reverence for antiquity and prescription has against it the unanimous voice of thirty-three centuries. If there be anything in which all peoples, nations, and languages, Jews, Greeks, Romans, Italians, Frenchmen, Englishmen, have agreed, it has been this, that the dearness of food is a great evil to the poor. Surely, the arguments which are to counterbalance such a mass of authority ought to be weighty. What then are those arguments? I know of only one. If any gentleman is acquainted with any other, I wish that he would communicate it to us; and I will engage that he shall have a fair and full hearing. The only argument that I know of is this, that there are some countries in the world where food is cheaper than in England, and where the people are more miserable than in England. Bengal has been mentioned. But Poland is the favourite case. Whenever we ask why there should not be a free trade in corn between the Vistula and the Thames, the answer is, "Do you wish our labourers to be reduced to the condition of the peasants of the Vistula?" Was such reasoning ever heard before? See how readily it may be turned against those who use it. Corn is cheaper at Cincinnati than here; but the wages of the labourer are much higher at Cincinnati than here: therefore, the lower the price of food, the higher the wages will be. This reasoning is just as good as the reasoning of our adversaries: that is to say, it is good for nothing. It is not one single cause that makes nations either prosperous or miserable. No friend of free trade is such an idiot as to say that free trade is the only valuable thing in the world; that religion, government, police, education, the administration of justice, public expenditure, foreign relations, have nothing whatever to do with the well-being of nations; that people sunk in superstition, slavery, barbarism, must be happy if they have only cheap food. These gentlemen take the most unfortunate country in the world, a country which, while it had an independent government, had the very worst of independent governments; the sovereign a mere phantom; the nobles defying him and quarrelling with each other; the great body of the population in a state of servitude; no middle class; no manufactures; scarcely any trade, and that in the hands of Jew pedlars. Such was Poland while it was a separate kingdom. But foreign invaders came down upon it. It was conquered: it was reconquered: it was partitioned: it was repartitioned: it is now under a government of which I will not trust myself to speak. This is the country to which these gentlemen go to study the effect of low prices. When they wish to ascertain the effect of high prices, they take our own country; a country which has been during many generations the best governed in Europe; a country where personal slavery has been unknown during ages; a country which enjoys the blessings of a pure religion, of freedom, of order; a country long secured by the sea against invasion; a country in which the oldest man living has never seen a foreign flag except as a trophy. Between these two countries our political philosophers institute a comparison. They find the Briton better off than the Pole; and they immediately come to the conclusion that the Briton is so well off because his bread is dear, and the Pole so ill off because his bread is cheap. Why, is there a single good which in this way I could not prove to be an evil, or a single evil which I could not prove to be a good? Take lameness. I will prove that it is the best thing in the world to be lame: for I can show you men who are lame, and yet much happier than many men who have the full use of their legs. I will prove health to be a calamity. For I can easily find you people in excellent health whose fortunes have been wrecked, whose character has been blasted, and who are more wretched than many invalids. But is that the way in which any man of common sense reasons? No; the question is: Would not the lame man be happier if you restored to him the use of his limbs? Would not the healthy man be more wretched if he had gout and rheumatism in addition to all his other calamities? Would not the Englishman be better off if food were as cheap here as in Poland? Would not the Pole be more miserable if food were as dear in Poland as here? More miserable indeed he would not long be: for he would be dead in a month.

It is evident that the true way of determining the question which we are considering, is to compare the state of a society when food is cheap with the state of that same society when food is dear; and this is a comparison which we can very easily make. We have only to recall to our memory what we have ourselves seen within the last ten years. Take the year 1835. Food was cheap then; and the capitalist prospered greatly. But was the labouring man miserable? On the contrary, it is notorious that work was plentiful, that wages were high, that the common people were thriving and contented. Then came a change like that in Pharaoh's dream. The thin ears had blighted the full ears; the lean kine had devoured the fat kine; the days of plenty were over; and the days of dearth had arrived. In 1841 the capitalist was doubtless distressed. But will anybody tell me that the capitalist was the only sufferer, or the chief sufferer? Have we forgotten what was the condition of the working people in that unhappy year? So visible was the misery of the manufacturing towns that a man of sensibility could hardly bear to pass through them. Everywhere he found filth and nakedness, and plaintive voices, and wasted forms, and haggard faces. Politicians who had never been thought alarmists began to tremble for the very foundations of society. First the mills were put on short time. Then they ceased to work at all. Then went to pledge the scanty property of the artisan: first his little luxuries, then his comforts, then his necessaries. The hovels were stripped till they were as bare as the wigwam of a Dogribbed Indian. Alone, amidst the general misery, the shop with the three golden balls prospered, and was crammed from cellar to garret with the clocks, and the tables, and the kettles, and the blankets, and the bibles of the poor. I remember well the effect which was produced in London by the unwonted sight of the huge pieces of cannon which were going northward to overawe the starving population of Lancashire. These evil days passed away. Since that time we have again had cheap bread. The capitalist has been a gainer. It was fit that he should be a gainer. But has he been the only gainer? Will those who are always telling us that the Polish labourer is worse off than the English labourer venture to tell us that the English labourer was worse off in 1844 than in 1841? Have we not everywhere seen the goods of the poor coming back from the magazine of the pawnbroker? Have we not seen in the house of the working man, in his clothing, in his very looks as he passed us in the streets, that he was a happier being? As to his pleasures, and especially as to the most innocent, the most salutary, of his pleasures, ask your own most intelligent and useful fellow citizen Mr Robert Chambers what sale popular books had in the year 1841, and what sale they had last year. I am assured that, in one week of 1845, the sums paid in wages within twenty miles of Manchester exceeded by a million and a half the sums paid in the corresponding week of 1841.

Gentlemen, both the capitalist and the labourer have been gainers, as they ought to have been gainers, by the diminution in the price of bread. But there is a third party, which ought not to have gained by that diminution, and yet has gained very greatly by it; and that party is Her Majesty's present Government. It is for the interest of rulers that those whom they rule should be prosperous. But the prosperity which we have lately enjoyed was a prosperity for which we were not indebted to our rulers. It came in spite of them. It was produced by the cheapness of that which they had laboured to render dear. Under pretence of making us independent of foreign supply, they have established a system which makes us dependent in the worst possible way. As my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black.), has justly said, there is a mutual dependence among nations of which we cannot get rid. That Providence has assigned different productions to different climates is a truth with which everybody is familiar. But this is not all. Even in the same climate different productions belong to different stages of civilisation. As one latitude is favourable to the vine and another to the sugar cane, so there is, in the same latitude, a state of society in which it is desirable that the industry of men should be almost entirely directed towards the cultivation of the earth, and another state of society in which it is desirable that a large part of the population should be employed in manufactures. No dependence can be conceived more natural, more salutary, more free from everything like degradation than the mutual dependence which exists between a nation which has a boundless extent of fertile land, and a nation which has a boundless command of machinery; between a nation whose business is to turn deserts into corn fields, and a nation whose business is to increase tenfold by ingenious processes the value of the fleece and of the rude iron ore. Even if that dependence were less beneficial than it is, we must submit to it; for it is inevitable. Make what laws we will, we must be dependent on other countries for a large part of our food. That point was decided when England ceased to be an exporting country. For, gentlemen, it is demonstrable that none but a country which ordinarily exports food can be independent of foreign supplies. If a manufacturer determines to produce ten thousand pair of stockings, he will produce the ten thousand, and neither more nor less. But an agriculturist cannot determine that he will produce ten thousand quarters of corn, and neither more nor less. That he may be sure of having ten thousand quarters in a bad year, he must sow such a quantity of land that he will have much more than ten thousand in a good year. It is evident that, if our island does not in ordinary years produce many more quarters than we want, it will in bad years produce fewer quarters than we want. And it is equally evident that our cultivators will not produce more quarters of corn than we want, unless they can export the surplus at a profit. Nobody ventures to tell us that Great Britain can be ordinarily an exporting country. It follows that we must be dependent: and the only question is, Which is the best mode of dependence? That question it is not difficult to answer. Go to Lancashire; see that multitude of cities, some of them equal in size to the capitals of large kingdoms. Look at the warehouses, the machinery, the canals, the railways, the docks. See the stir of that hive of human beings busily employed in making, packing, conveying stuffs which are to be worn in Canada and Caffraria, in Chili and Java. You naturally ask, How is this immense population, collected on an area which will not yield food for one tenth part of them, to be nourished? But change the scene. Go beyond the Ohio, and there you will see another species of industry, equally extensive and equally flourishing. You will see the wilderness receding fast before the advancing tide of life and civilisation, vast harvests waving round the black stumps of what a few months ago was a pathless forest, and cottages, barns, mills, rising amidst the haunts of the wolf and the bear. Here is more than enough corn to feed the artisans of our thickly peopled island; and most gladly would the grower of that corn exchange it for a Sheffield knife, a Birmingham spoon, a warm coat of Leeds woollen cloth, a light dress of Manchester cotton. But this exchange our rulers prohibit. They say to our manufacturing population, "You would willingly weave clothes for the people of America, and they would gladly sow wheat for you; but we prohibit this intercourse. We condemn both your looms and their ploughs to inaction. We will compel you to pay a high price for a stinted meal. We will compel those who would gladly be your purveyors and your customers to be your rivals. We will compel them to turn manufacturers in self-defence; and when, in close imitation of us, they impose high duties on British goods for the protection of their own produce, we will, in our speeches and despatches, express wonder and pity at their strange ignorance of political economy."

Such has been the policy of Her Majesty's Ministers; but it has not yet been fairly brought to the trial. Good harvests have prevented bad laws from producing their full effect. The Government has had a run of luck; and vulgar observers have mistaken luck for wisdom. But such runs of luck do not last forever. Providence will not always send the rain and the sunshine just at such a time and in such a quantity as to save the reputation of shortsighted statesmen. There is too much reason to believe that evil days are approaching. On such a subject it is a sacred duty to avoid exaggeration; and I shall do so. I observe that the writers,—wretched writers they are,—who defend the present Administration, assert that there is no probability of a considerable rise in the price of provisions, and that the Whigs and the Anti-Corn-Law League are busily engaged in circulating false reports for the vile purpose of raising a panic. Now, gentlemen, it shall not be in the power of anybody to throw any such imputation on me; for I shall describe our prospects in the words of the Ministers themselves. I hold in my hand a letter in which Sir Thomas Freemantle, Secretary for Ireland, asks for information touching the potato crop in that country. His words are these. "Her Majesty's Government is seeking to learn the opinion of judges and well informed persons in every part of Ireland regarding the probability of the supply being sufficient for the support of the people during the ensuing winter and spring, provided care be taken in preserving the stock, and economy used in its consumption." Here, you will observe, it is taken for granted that the supply is not sufficient for a year's consumption: it is taken for granted that, without care and economy, the supply will not last to the end of the spring; and a doubt is expressed whether, with care and economy, the supply will last even through the winter. In this letter the Ministers of the Crown tell us that famine is close at hand; and yet, when this letter was written, the duty on foreign corn was seventeen shillings a quarter. Is it necessary to say more about the merits of the sliding scale? We were assured that this wonderful piece of machinery would secure us against all danger of scarcity. But unhappily we find that there is a hitch; the sliding scale will not slide; the Ministers are crying "Famine," while the index which they themselves devised is still pointing to "Plenty."

And thus, Sir, I come back to the resolution which I hold in my hand, A dear year is before us. The price of meal is already, I believe, half as much again as it was a few months ago. Again, unhappily, we are able to bring to the test of facts the doctrine, that the dearness of food benefits the labourer and injures only the capitalist. The price of food is rising. Are wages rising? On the contrary, they are falling. In numerous districts the symptoms of distress are already perceptible. The manufacturers are already beginning to work short time. Warned by repeated experience, they know well what is coming, and expect that 1846 will be a second 1841.

If these things do not teach us wisdom, we are past all teaching. Twice in ten years we have seen the price of corn go up; and, as it went up, the wages of the labouring classes went down. Twice in the same period we have seen the price of corn go down; and, as it went down, the wages of the labouring classes went up. Surely such experiments as these would in any science be considered as decisive.

The prospect, gentlemen, is, doubtless, gloomy. Yet it has its bright part. I have already congratulated you on the important fact that Lord John Russell and those who have hitherto acted on this subject in concert with him, have given up all thoughts of fixed duty. I have to congratulate you on another fact not less important. I am assured that the working people of the manufacturing districts have at last come to understand this question. The sharp discipline which they have undergone has produced this good effect; that they will never again listen to any orator who shall have the effrontery to tell them that their wages rise and fall with the price of the loaf. Thus we shall go into the contest under such leading and with such a following as we never had before. The best part of the aristocracy will be at our head. Millions of labouring men, who had been separated from us by the arts of impostors, will be in our rear. So led and so followed, we may, I think, look forward to victory, if not in this, yet in the next Parliament. But, whether our triumph be near or remote, I assure you that I shall not fail as regards this question, to prove myself your true representative. I will now, my Lord, put into your hands this resolution, "That the present corn law presses with especial severity on the poorer classes."

*****



THE TEN HOURS BILL. (MAY 22, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 22D OF MAY 1846.

On the twenty-ninth of April, 1846, Mr Fielden, Member for Oldham, moved the second reading of a Bill for limiting the labour of young persons in factories to ten hours a day. The debate was adjourned, and was repeatedly resumed at long intervals. At length, on the twenty-second of May the Bill was rejected by 203 votes to 193. On that day the following Speech was made.

It is impossible, Sir, that I can remain silent after the appeal which has been made to me in so pointed a manner by my honourable friend, the Member for Sheffield (Mr Ward.), and even if that appeal had not been made to me, I should have been very desirous to have an opportunity of explaining the grounds on which I shall vote for the second reading of this bill.

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to assure my honourable friend that I utterly disapprove of those aspersions which have, both in this House and out of it, been thrown on the owners of factories. For that valuable class of men I have no feeling but respect and good will. I am convinced that with their interests the interests of the whole community, and especially of the labouring classes, are inseparably bound up. I can also with perfect sincerity declare that the vote which I shall give to-night will not be a factious vote. In no circumstances indeed should I think that the laws of political hostility warranted me in treating this question as a party question. But at the present moment I would much rather strengthen than weaken the hands of Her Majesty's Ministers. It is by no means pleasant to me to be under the necessity of opposing them. I assure them, I assure my friends on this side of the House with whom I am so unfortunate as to differ, and especially my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield, who spoke, I must say, in rather too plaintive a tone, that I have no desire to obtain credit for humanity at their expense. I fully believe that their feeling towards the labouring people is quite as kind as mine. There is no difference between us as to ends: there is an honest difference of opinion as to means: and we surely ought to be able to discuss the points on which we differ without one angry emotion or one acrimonious word.

The details of the bill, Sir, will be more conveniently and more regularly discussed when we consider it in Committee. Our business at present is with the principle: and the principle, we are told by many gentlemen of great authority, is unsound. In their opinion, neither this bill, nor any other bill regulating the hours of labour, can be defended. This, they say, is one of those matters about which we ought not to legislate at all; one of those matters which settle themselves far better than any government can settle them. Now it is most important that this point should be fully cleared up. We certainly ought not to usurp functions which do not properly belong to us: but, on the other hand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly belong to us. I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternal government, that is to say a prying, meddlesome government, which intrudes itself into every part of human life, and which thinks that it can do everything for everybody better than anybody can do anything for himself; or a careless, lounging government, which suffers grievances, such as it could at once remove, to grow and multiply, and which to all complaint and remonstrance has only one answer: "We must let things alone: we must let things take their course: we must let things find their level." There is no more important problem in politics than to ascertain the just mean between these two most pernicious extremes, to draw correctly the line which divides those cases in which it is the duty of the State to interfere from those cases in which it is the duty of the State to abstain from interference. In old times the besetting sin of rulers was undoubtedly an inordinate disposition to meddle. The lawgiver was always telling people how to keep their shops, how to till their fields, how to educate their children, how many dishes to have on their tables, how much a yard to give for the cloth which made their coats. He was always trying to remedy some evil which did not properly fall within his province: and the consequence was that he increased the evils which he attempted to remedy. He was so much shocked by the distress inseparable from scarcity that he made statutes against forestalling and regrating, and so turned the scarcity into a famine. He was so much shocked by the cunning and hardheartedness of money-lenders that he made laws against usury; and the consequence was that the borrower, who, if he had been left unprotected, would have got money at ten per cent., could hardly, when protected, get it at fifteen per cent. Some eminent political philosophers of the last century exposed with great ability the folly of such legislation, and, by doing so, rendered a great service to mankind. There has been a reaction, a reaction which has doubtless produced much good, but which like most reactions, has not been without evils and dangers. Our statesmen cannot now be accused of being busybodies. But I am afraid that there is, even in some of the ablest and most upright among them a tendency to the opposite fault. I will give an instance of what I mean. Fifteen years ago it became evident that railroads would soon, in every part of the kingdom, supersede to a great extent the old highways. The tracing of the new routes which were to join all the chief cities, ports, and naval arsenals of the island was a matter of the highest national importance. But, unfortunately, those who should have acted for the nation, refused to interfere. Consequently, numerous questions which were really public, questions which concerned the public convenience, the public prosperity, the public security, were treated as private questions. That the whole society was interested in having a good system of internal communication seemed to be forgotten. The speculator who wanted a large dividend on his shares, the landowner who wanted a large price for his acres, obtained a full hearing. But nobody applied to be heard on behalf of the community. The effects of that great error we feel, and we shall not soon cease to feel. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are in danger of committing to-night an error of the same kind. The honourable member for Montrose (Mr Hume.) and my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield think that the question before us is merely a question between the old and the new theories of commerce. They cannot understand how any friend of free trade can wish the Legislature to interfere between the capitalist and the labourer. They say, "You do not make a law to settle the price of gloves, or the texture of gloves, or the length of credit which the glover shall give. You leave it to him to determine whether he will charge high or low prices, whether he will use strong or flimsy materials, whether he will trust or insist on ready money. You acknowledge that these are matters which he ought to be left to settle with his customers, and that we ought not to interfere. It is possible that he may manage his shop ill. But it is certain that we shall manage it ill. On the same grounds on which you leave the seller of gloves and the buyer of gloves to make their own contract, you ought to leave the seller of labour and the buyer of labour to make their own contract."

I have a great respect, Sir, for those who reason thus: but I cannot see this matter in the light in which it appears to them; and, though I may distrust my own judgment, I must be guided by it. I am, I believe, as strongly attached as any member of this House to the principle of free trade, rightly understood. Trade, considered merely as trade, considered merely with reference to the pecuniary interest of the contracting parties, can hardly be too free. But there is a great deal of trade which cannot be considered merely as trade, and which affects higher than pecuniary interests. And to say that Government never ought to regulate such trade is a monstrous proposition, a proposition at which Adam Smith would have stood aghast. We impose some restrictions on trade for purposes of police. Thus, we do not suffer everybody who has a cab and a horse to ply for passengers in the streets of London. We do not leave the fare to be determined by the supply and the demand. We do not permit a driver to extort a guinea for going half a mile on a rainy day when there is no other vehicle on the stand. We impose some restrictions on trade for the sake of revenue. Thus, we forbid a farmer to cultivate tobacco on his own ground. We impose some restrictions on trade for the sake of national defence. Thus we compel a man who would rather be ploughing or weaving to go into the militia; and we fix the amount of pay which he shall receive without asking his consent. Nor is there in all this anything inconsistent with the soundest political economy. For the science of political economy teaches us only that we ought not on commercial grounds to interfere with the liberty of commerce; and we, in the cases which I have put, interfere with the liberty of commerce on higher than commercial grounds.

And now, Sir, to come closer to the case with which we have to deal, I say, first, that where the health of the community is concerned, it may be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals; and to this proposition I am quite sure that Her Majesty's Government will cordially assent. I have just read a very interesting report signed by two members of that Government, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the noble earl who was lately Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests, and who is now Secretary for Ireland (The Earl of Lincoln.); and, since that report was laid before the House, the noble earl himself has, with the sanction of the Cabinet, brought in a bill for the protection of the public health. By this bill it is provided that no man shall be permitted to build a house on his own land in any great town without giving notice to certain Commissioners. No man is to sink a cellar without the consent of these Commissioners. The house must not be of less than a prescribed width. No new house must be built without a drain. If an old house has no drain, the Commissioners may order the owner to make a drain. If he refuses, they make a drain for him, and send him in the bill. They may order him to whitewash his house. If he refuses, they may send people with pails and brushes to whitewash it for him, at his charge. Now, suppose that some proprietor of houses at Leeds or Manchester were to expostulate with the Government in the language in which the Government has expostulated with the supporters of this bill for the regulation of factories. Suppose he were to say to the noble earl, "Your lordship professes to be a friend to free trade. Your lordship's doctrine is that everybody ought to be at liberty to buy cheap and to sell dear. Why then may not I run up a house as cheap as I can, and let my rooms as dear as I can? Your lordship does not like houses without drains. Do not take one of mine then. You think my bedrooms filthy. Nobody forces you to sleep in them. Use your own liberty: but do not restrain that of your neighbours. I can find many a family willing to pay a shilling a week for leave to live in what you call a hovel. And why am not I to take the shilling which they are willing to give me? And why are not they to have such shelter as, for that shilling, I can afford them? Why did you send a man without my consent to clean my house, and then force me to pay for what I never ordered? My tenants thought the house clean enough for them; or they would not have been my tenants; and, if they and I were satisfied, why did you, in direct defiance of all the principles of free trade, interfere between us?" This reasoning, Sir, is exactly of a piece with the reasoning of the honourable Member for Montrose, and of my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield. If the noble earl will allow me to make a defence for him, I believe that he would answer the objection thus: "I hold," he would say, "the sound doctrine of free trade. But your doctrine of free trade is an exaggeration, a caricature of the sound doctrine; and by exhibiting such a caricature you bring discredit on the sound doctrine. We should have nothing to do with the contracts between you and your tenants, if those contracts affected only pecuniary interests. But higher than pecuniary interests are at stake. It concerns the commonwealth that the great body of the people should not live in a way which makes life wretched and short, which enfeebles the body and pollutes the mind. If, by living in houses which resemble hogstyes, great numbers of our countrymen have contracted the tastes of hogs, if they have become so familiar with filth and stench and contagion, that they burrow without reluctance in holes which would turn the stomach of any man of cleanly habits, that is only an additional proof that we have too long neglected our duties, and an additional reason for our now performing them."

Secondly, I say that where the public morality is concerned it may be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals. Take the traffic in licentious books and pictures. Will anybody deny that the State may, with propriety, interdict that traffic? Or take the case of lotteries. I have, we will suppose, an estate for which I wish to get twenty thousand pounds. I announce my intention to issue a thousand tickets at twenty pounds each. The holder of the number which is first drawn is to have the estate. But the magistrate interferes; the contract between me and the purchasers of my tickets is annulled; and I am forced to pay a heavy penalty for having made such a contract. I appeal to the principle of free trade, as expounded by the honourable gentlemen the Members for Montrose and Sheffield. I say to you, the legislators who have restricted my liberty, "What business have you to interfere between a buyer and a seller? If you think the speculation a bad one, do not take tickets. But do not interdict other people from judging for themselves." Surely you would answer, "You would be right if this were a mere question of trade: but it is a question of morality. We prohibit you from disposing of your property in this particular mode, because it is a mode which tends to encourage a most pernicious habit of mind, a habit of mind incompatible with all the qualities on which the well-being of individuals and of nations depends."

It must then, I think, be admitted that, where health is concerned, and where morality is concerned, the State is justified in interfering with the contracts of individuals. And, if this be admitted, it follows that the case with which we now have to do is a case for interference.

Will it be denied that the health of a large part of the rising generation may be seriously affected by the contracts which this bill is intended to regulate? Can any man who has read the evidence which is before us, can any man who has ever observed young people, can any man who remembers his own sensations when he was young, doubt that twelve hours a day of labour in a factory is too much for a lad of thirteen?

Or will it be denied that this is a question in which public morality is concerned? Can any one doubt,—none, I am sure, of my friends around me doubts,—that education is a matter of the highest importance to the virtue and happiness of a people? Now we know that there can be no education without leisure. It is evident that, after deducting from the day twelve hours for labour in a factory, and the additional hours necessary for exercise, refreshment, and repose, there will not remain time enough for education.

I have now, I think, shown that this bill is not in principle objectionable; and yet I have not touched the strongest part of our case. I hold that, where public health is concerned, and where public morality is concerned, the State may be justified in regulating even the contracts of adults. But we propose to regulate only the contracts of infants. Now, was there ever a civilised society in which the contracts of infants were not under some regulation? Is there a single member of this House who will say that a wealthy minor of thirteen ought to be at perfect liberty to execute a conveyance of his estate, or to give a bond for fifty thousand pounds? If anybody were so absurd as to say, "What has the Legislature to do with the matter? Why cannot you leave trade free? Why do you pretend to understand the boy's interest better than he understands it?"—you would answer; "When he grows up, he may squander his fortune away if he likes: but at present the State is his guardian; and he shall not ruin himself till he is old enough to know what he is about." The minors whom we wish to protect have not indeed large property to throw away: but they are not the less our wards. Their only inheritance, the only fund to which they must look for their subsistence through life, is the sound mind in the sound body. And is it not our duty to prevent them from wasting their most precious wealth before they know its value?

But, it is said, this bill, though it directly limits only the labour of infants, will, by an indirect operation, limit also the labour of adults. Now, Sir, though I am not prepared to vote for a bill directly limiting the labour of adults, I will plainly say that I do not think that the limitation of the labour of adults would necessarily produce all those frightful consequences which we have heard predicted. You cheer me in very triumphant tones, as if I had uttered some monstrous paradox. Pray, does it not occur to any of you that the labour of adults is now limited in this country? Are you not aware that you are living in a society in which the labour of adults is limited to six days in seven? It is you, not I, who maintain a paradox opposed to the opinions and the practices of all nations and ages. Did you ever hear of a single civilised State since the beginning of the world in which a certain portion of time was not set apart for the rest and recreation of adults by public authority? In general, this arrangement has been sanctioned by religion. The Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, had their holidays: the Hindoo has his holidays: the Mussulman has his holidays: there are holidays in the Greek Church, holidays in the Church of Rome, holidays in the Church of England. Is it not amusing to hear a gentleman pronounce with confidence that any legislation which limits the labour of adults must produce consequences fatal to society, without once reflecting that in the society in which he lives, and in every other society that exists, or ever has existed, there has been such legislation without any evil consequence? It is true that a Puritan Government in England, and an Atheistical Government in France, abolished the old holidays as superstitious. But those Governments felt it to be absolutely necessary to institute new holidays. Civil festivals were substituted for religious festivals. You will find among the ordinances of the Long Parliament a law providing that, in exchange for the days of rest and amusement which the people had been used to enjoy at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, the second Tuesday in every month should be given to the working man, and that any apprentice who was forced to work on the second Tuesday of any month might have his master up before a magistrate. The French Jacobins decreed that the Sunday should no longer be a day of rest; but they instituted another day of rest, the Decade. They swept away the holidays of the Roman Catholic Church; but they instituted another set of holidays, the Sansculottides, one sacred to Genius, one to Industry, one to Opinion, and so on. I say, therefore, that the practice of limiting by law the time of the labour of adults is so far from being, as some gentlemen seem to think, an unheard of and monstrous practice, that it is a practice as universal as cookery, as the wearing of clothes, as the use of domestic animals.

And has this practice been proved by experience to be pernicious? Let us take the instance with which we are most familiar. Let us inquire what has been the effect of those laws which, in our own country, limit the labour of adults to six days in every seven. It is quite unnecessary to discuss the question whether Christians be or be not bound by a divine command to observe the Sunday. For it is evident that, whether our weekly holiday be of divine or of human institution, the effect on the temporal interests of Society will be exactly the same. Now, is there a single argument in the whole Speech of my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield which does not tell just as strongly against the laws which enjoin the observance of the Sunday as against the bill on our table? Surely, if his reasoning is good for hours, it must be equally good for days.

He says, "If this limitation be good for the working people, rely on it that they will find it out, and that they will themselves establish it without any law." Why not reason in the same way about the Sunday? Why not say, "If it be a good thing for the people of London to shut their shops one day in seven, they will find it out, and will shut their shops without a law?" Sir, the answer is obvious. I have no doubt that, if you were to poll the shopkeepers of London, you would find an immense majority, probably a hundred to one, in favour of closing shops on the Sunday; and yet it is absolutely necessary to give to the wish of the majority the sanction of a law; for, if there were no such law, the minority, by opening their shops, would soon force the majority to do the same.

But, says my honourable friend, you cannot limit the labour of adults unless you fix wages. This proposition he lays down repeatedly, assures us that it is incontrovertible, and indeed seems to think it self-evident; for he has not taken the trouble to prove it. Sir, my answer shall be very short. We have, during many centuries, limited the labour of adults to six days in seven; and yet we have not fixed the rate of wages.

But, it is said, you cannot legislate for all trades; and therefore you had better not legislate for any. Look at the poor sempstress. She works far longer and harder than the factory child. She sometimes plies her needle fifteen, sixteen hours in the twenty-four. See how the housemaid works, up at six every morning, and toiling up stairs and down stairs till near midnight. You own that you cannot do anything for the sempstress and the housemaid. Why then trouble yourself about the factory child? Take care that by protecting one class you do not aggravate the hardships endured by the classes which you cannot protect. Why, Sir, might not all this be said, word for word, against the laws which enjoin the observance of the Sunday? There are classes of people whom you cannot prevent from working on the Sunday. There are classes of people whom, if you could, you ought not to prevent from working on the Sunday. Take the sempstress, of whom so much has been said. You cannot keep her from sewing and hemming all Sunday in her garret. But you do not think that a reason for suffering Covent Garden Market, and Leadenhall Market, and Smithfield Market, and all the shops from Mile End to Hyde Park to be open all Sunday. Nay, these factories about which we are debating,—does anybody propose that they shall be allowed to work all Sunday? See then how inconsistent you are. You think it unjust to limit the labour of the factory child to ten hours a day, because you cannot limit the labour of the sempstress. And yet you see no injustice in limiting the labour of the factory child, aye, and of the factory man, to six days in the week, though you cannot limit the labour of the sempstress.

But, you say, by protecting one class we shall aggravate the sufferings of all the classes which we cannot protect. You say this; but you do not prove it; and all experience proves the contrary. We interfere on the Sunday to close the shops. We do not interfere with the labour of the housemaid. But are the housemaids of London more severely worked on the Sunday than on other days? The fact notoriously is the reverse. For your legislation keeps the public feeling in a right state, and thus protects indirectly those whom it cannot protect directly.

Will my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield maintain that the law which limits the number of working days has been injurious to the working population? I am certain that he will not. How then can he expect me to believe that a law which limits the number of working hours must necessarily be injurious to the working population? Yet he and those who agree with him seem to wonder at our dulness because we do not at once admit the truth of the doctrine which they propound on this subject. They reason thus. We cannot reduce the number of hours of labour in factories without reducing the amount of production. We cannot reduce the amount of production without reducing the remuneration of the labourer. Meanwhile, foreigners, who are at liberty to work till they drop down dead at their looms, will soon beat us out of all the markets of the world. Wages will go down fast. The condition of our working people will be far worse than it is; and our unwise interference will, like the unwise interference of our ancestors with the dealings of the corn factor and the money lender, increase the distress of the very class which we wish to relieve.

Now, Sir, I fully admit that there might be such a limitation of the hours of labour as would produce the evil consequences with which we are threatened; and this, no doubt, is a very good reason for legislating with great caution, for feeling our way, for looking well to all the details of this bill. But it is certainly not true that every limitation of the hours of labour must produce these consequences. And I am, I must say, surprised when I hear men of eminent ability and knowledge lay down the proposition that a diminution of the time of labour must be followed by diminution of the wages of labour, as a proposition universally true, as a proposition capable of being strictly demonstrated, as a proposition about which there can be no more doubt than about any theorem in Euclid. Sir, I deny the truth of the proposition; and for this plain reason. We have already, by law, greatly reduced the time of labour in factories. Thirty years ago, the late Sir Robert Peel told the House that it was a common practice to make children of eight years of age toil in mills fifteen hours a day. A law has since been made which prohibits persons under eighteen years of age from working in mills more than twelve hours a day. That law was opposed on exactly the same grounds on which the bill before us is opposed. Parliament was told then, as it is told now, that with the time of labour the quantity of production would decrease, that with the quantity of production the wages would decrease, that our manufacturers would be unable to contend with foreign manufacturers, and that the condition of the labouring population instead of being made better by the interference of the Legislature would be made worse. Read over those debates; and you may imagine that you are reading the debate of this evening. Parliament disregarded these prophecies. The time of labour was limited. Have wages fallen? Has the cotton trade left Manchester for France or Germany? Has the condition of the working people become more miserable? Is it not universally acknowledged that the evils which were so confidently predicted have not come to pass? Let me be understood. I am not arguing that, because a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from fifteen to twelve did not reduce wages, a law reducing those hours from twelve to ten or eleven cannot possibly reduce wages. That would be very inconclusive reasoning. What I say is this, that, since a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from fifteen to twelve has not reduced wages, the proposition that every reduction of the hours of labour must necessarily reduce wages is a false proposition. There is evidently some flaw in that demonstration which my honourable friend thinks so complete; and what the flaw is we may perhaps discover if we look at the analogous case to which I have so often referred.

Sir, exactly three hundred years ago, great religious changes were taking place in England. Much was said and written, in that inquiring and innovating age, about the question whether Christians were under a religious obligation to rest from labour on one day in the week; and it is well known that the chief Reformers, both here and on the Continent, denied the existence of any such obligation. Suppose then that, in 1546, Parliament had made a law that they should thenceforth be no distinction between the Sunday and any other day. Now, Sir, our opponents, if they are consistent with themselves, must hold that such a law would have immensely increased the wealth of the country and the remuneration of the working man. What an effect, if their principles be sound, must have been produced by the addition of one sixth to the time of labour! What an increase of production! What a rise of wages! How utterly unable must the foreign artisan, who still had his days of festivity and of repose, have found himself to maintain a competition with a people whose shops were open, whose markets were crowded, whose spades and axes, and planes, and hods, and anvils, and looms were at work from morning till night on three hundred and sixty-five days a year! The Sundays of three hundred years make up fifty years of our working days. We know what the industry of fifty years can do. We know what marvels the industry of the last fifty years has wrought. The arguments of my honourable friend irresistibly lead us to this conclusion, that if, during the last three centuries, the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, we should have been a far richer, a far more highly civilised people than we now are, and that the labouring classes especially would have been far better off than at present. But does he, does any Member of the House, seriously believe that this would have been the case? For my own part, I have not the smallest doubt that, if we and our ancestors had, during the last three centuries, worked just as hard on the Sunday as on the week days, we should have been at this moment a poorer people and a less civilised people than we are; that there would have been less production than there has been, that the wages of the labourer would have been lower than they are, and that some other nation would have been now making cotton stuffs and woollen stuffs and cutlery for the whole world.

Of course, Sir, I do not mean to say that a man will not produce more in a week by working seven days than by working six days. But I very much doubt whether, at the end of a year, he will generally have produced more by working seven days a week than by working six days a week; and I firmly believe that, at the end of twenty years, he will have produced much less by working seven days a week than by working six days a week. In the same manner I do not deny that a factory child will produce more, in a single day, by working twelve hours than by working ten hours, and by working fifteen hours than by working twelve hours. But I do deny that a great society in which children work fifteen, or even twelve hours a day will, in the lifetime of a generation, produce as much as if those children had worked less. If we consider man merely in a commercial point of view, if we consider him merely as a machine for the production of worsted and calico, let us not forget what a piece of mechanism he is, how fearfully and wonderfully made. We do not treat a fine horse or a sagacious dog exactly as we treat a spinning jenny. Nor will any slaveholder, who has sense enough to know his own interest, treat his human chattels exactly as he treats his horses and his dogs. And would you treat the free labourer of England like a mere wheel or pulley? Rely on it that intense labour, beginning too early in life, continued too long every day, stunting the growth of the body, stunting the growth of the mind, leaving no time for healthful exercise, leaving no time for intellectual culture, must impair all those high qualities which have made our country great. Your overworked boys will become a feeble and ignoble race of men, the parents of a more feeble and more ignoble progeny; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the labourer will injuriously affect those very interests to which his physical and moral energies have been sacrificed. On the other hand, a day of rest recurring in every week, two or three hours of leisure, exercise, innocent amusement or useful study, recurring every day, must improve the whole man, physically, morally, intellectually; and the improvement of the man will improve all that the man produces. Why is it, Sir, that the Hindoo cotton manufacturer, close to whose door the cotton grows, cannot, in the bazaar of his own town, maintain a competition with the English cotton manufacturer, who has to send thousands of miles for the raw material, and who has then to send the wrought material thousands of miles to market? You will say that it is owing to the excellence of our machinery. And to what is the excellence of our machinery owing? How many of the improvements which have been made in our machinery do we owe to the ingenuity and patient thought of working men? Adam Smith tells us in the first chapter of his great work, that you can hardly go to a factory without seeing some very pretty machine,—that is his expression,—devised by some labouring man. Hargraves, the inventor of the spinning jenny, was a common artisan. Crompton, the inventor of the mule jenny, was a working man. How many hours of the labour of children would do so much for our manufactures as one of these improvements has done? And in what sort of society are such improvements most likely to be made? Surely in a society in which the faculties of the working people are developed by education. How long will you wait before any negro, working under the lash in Louisiana, will contrive a better machinery for squeezing the sugar canes? My honourable friend seems to me, in all his reasonings about the commercial prosperity of nations, to overlook entirely the chief cause on which that prosperity depends. What is it, Sir, that makes the great difference between country and country? Not the exuberance of soil; not the mildness of climate; not mines, nor havens, nor rivers. These things are indeed valuable when put to their proper use by human intelligence: but human intelligence can do much without them; and they without human intelligence can do nothing. They exist in the highest degree in regions of which the inhabitants are few, and squalid, and barbarous, and naked, and starving; while on sterile rocks, amidst unwholesome marshes, and under inclement skies, may be found immense populations, well fed, well lodged, well clad, well governed. Nature meant Egypt and Sicily to be the gardens of the world. They once were so. Is it anything in the earth or in the air that makes Scotland more prosperous than Egypt, that makes Holland more prosperous than Sicily? No; it was the Scotchman that made Scotland; it was the Dutchman that made Holland. Look at North America. Two centuries ago the sites on which now arise mills, and hotels, and banks, and colleges, and churches, and the Senate Houses of flourishing commonwealths, were deserts abandoned to the panther and the bear. What has made the change? Was it the rich mould, or the redundant rivers? No: the prairies were as fertile, the Ohio and the Hudson were as broad and as full then as now. Was the improvement the effect of some great transfer of capital from the old world to the new? No, the emigrants generally carried out with them no more than a pittance; but they carried out the English heart, and head, and arm; and the English heart and head and arm turned the wilderness into cornfield and orchard, and the huge trees of the primeval forest into cities and fleets. Man, man is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling, when compared with the difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven. That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man, the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal vigour. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger, and healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorer. You try to frighten us by telling us, that in some German factories, the young work seventeen hours in the twenty-four, that they work so hard that among thousands there is not one who grows to such a stature that he can be admitted into the army; and you ask whether, if we pass this bill, we can possibly hold our own against such competition as this? Sir, I laugh at the thought of such competition. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it, not to a race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre-eminently vigorous in body and in mind.

For these reasons, Sir, I approve of the principle of this bill, and shall, without hesitation, vote for the second reading. To what extent we ought to reduce the hours of labour is a question of more difficulty. I think that we are in the situation of a physician who has satisfied himself that there is a disease, and that there is a specific medicine for the disease, but who is not certain what quantity of that medicine the patient's constitution will bear. Such a physician would probably administer his remedy by small doses, and carefully watch its operation. I cannot help thinking that, by at once reducing the hours of labour from twelve to ten, we should hazard too much. The change is great, and ought to be cautiously and gradually made. Suppose that there should be an immediate fall of wages, which is not impossible. Might there not be a violent reaction? Might not the public take up a notion that our legislation had been erroneous in principle, though, in truth, our error would have been an error, not of principle, but merely of degree? Might not Parliament be induced to retrace its steps? Might we not find it difficult to maintain even the present limitation? The wisest course would, in my opinion, be to reduce the hours of labour from twelve to eleven, to observe the effect of that experiment, and if, as I hope and believe, the result should be satisfactory, then to make a further reduction from eleven to ten. This is a question, however, which will be with more advantage considered when we are in Committee.

One word, Sir, before I sit down, in answer to my noble friend near me. (Lord Morpeth.) He seems to think that this bill is ill timed. I own that I cannot agree with him. We carried up on Monday last to the bar of the Lords a bill which will remove the most hateful and pernicious restriction that ever was laid on trade. Nothing can be more proper than to apply, in the same week, a remedy to a great evil of a directly opposite kind. As lawgivers, we have two great faults to confess and to repair. We have done that which we ought not to have done. We have left undone that which we ought to have done. We have regulated that which we should have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that which we were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industry a protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from public health and public morals the protection which was their due. We have prevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get it cheapest; but we have not prevented him from ruining his body and mind by premature and immoderate toil. I hope that we have seen the last both of a vicious system of interference and of a vicious system of non-interference, and that our poorer countrymen will no longer have reason to attribute their sufferings either to our meddling or to our neglect.

*****



THE LITERATURE OF BRITAIN. (NOVEMBER 4, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT THE OPENING OF THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION ON THE 4TH OF NOVEMBER 1846.

I thank you, Gentlemen, for this cordial reception. I have thought it right to steal a short time from duties not unimportant for the purpose of lending my aid to a an undertaking calculated, as I think, to raise the credit and to promote the best interests of the city which has so many claims on my gratitude.

The Directors of our Institution have requested me to propose to you as a toast the Literature of Britain. They could not have assigned to me a more agreeable duty. They chief object of this Institution is, I conceive, to impart knowledge through the medium of our own language. Edinburgh is already rich in libraries worthy of her fame as a seat of literature and a seat of jurisprudence. A man of letters can here without difficulty obtain access to repositories filled with the wisdom of many ages and of many nations. But something was still wanting. We still wanted a library open to that large, that important, that respectable class which, though by no means destitute of liberal curiosity or of sensibility to literary pleasures, is yet forced to be content with what is written in our own tongue. For that class especially, I do not say exclusively, this library is intended. Our directors, I hope, will not be satisfied, I, as a member, shall certainly not be satisfied, till we possess a noble and complete collection of English books, till it is impossible to seek in vain on our shelves for a single English book which is valuable either on account of matter or on account of manner, which throws any light on our civil, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or social history, which, in short, can afford either useful instruction or harmless amusement.

From such a collection, placed within the reach of that large and valuable class which I have mentioned, I am disposed to expect great good. And when I say this, I do not take into the account those rare cases to which my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black.), so happily alluded. It is indeed not impossible that some man of genius who may enrich our literature with imperishable eloquence or song, or who may extend the empire of our race over matter, may feel in our reading room, for the first time the consciousness of powers yet undeveloped. It is not impossible that our volumes may suggest the first thought of something great to some future Burns, or Watt, or Arkwright. But I do not speak of these extraordinary cases. What I confidently anticipate is that, through the whole of that class whose benefit we have peculiarly in view, there will be a moral and an intellectual improvement; that many hours, which might otherwise be wasted in folly or in vice, will be employed in pursuits which, while they afford the highest and most lasting pleasure, are not only harmless, but purifying and elevating. My own experience, my own observation, justifies me in entertaining this hope. I have had opportunities, both in this and in other countries, of forming some estimate of the effect which is likely to be produced by a good collection of books on a society of young men. There is, I will venture to say, no judicious commanding officer of a regiment who will not tell you that the vicinity of a valuable library will improve perceptibly the whole character of a mess. I well knew one eminent military servant of the East India Company, a man of great and various accomplishments, a man honourably distinguished both in war and in diplomacy, a man who enjoyed the confidence of some of the greatest generals and statesmen of our time. When I asked him how, having left his country while still a boy, and having passed his youth at military stations in India, he had been able to educate himself, his answer was, that he had been stationed in the neighbourhood of an excellent library, that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.

Some of the objections which have been made to such institutions as ours have been so happily and completely refuted by my friend the Lord Provost, and by the Most Reverend Prelate who has honoured us with his presence this evening (Archbishop Whateley.), that it would be idle to say again what has been so well said. There is, however, one objection which, with your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge, they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous to the commonwealth. Such half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. And then the authority of Pope is vouched. Drink deep or taste not; shallow draughts intoxicate: drink largely; and that will sober you. I must confess that the danger which alarms these gentlemen never seemed to me very serious: and my reason is this; that I never could prevail on any person who pronounced superficial knowledge a curse, and profound knowledge a blessing, to tell me what was his standard of profundity. The argument proceeds on the supposition that there is some line between profound and superficial knowledge similar to that which separates truth from falsehood. I know of no such line. When we talk of men of deep science, do we mean that they have got to the bottom or near the bottom of science? Do we mean that they know all that is capable of being known? Do we mean even that they know, in their own especial department, all that the smatterers of the next generation will know? Why, if we compare the little truth that we know with the infinite mass of truth which we do not know, we are all shallow together; and the greatest philosophers that ever lived would be the first to confess their shallowness. If we could call up the first of human beings, if we could call up Newton, and ask him whether, even in those sciences in which he had no rival, he considered himself as profoundly knowing, he would have told us that he was but a smatterer like ourselves, and that the difference between his knowledge and ours vanished, when compared with the quantity of truth still undiscovered, just as the distance between a person at the foot of Ben Lomond and at the top of Ben Lomond vanishes when compared with the distance of the fixed stars.

It is evident then that those who are afraid of superficial knowledge do not mean by superficial knowledge knowledge which is superficial when compared with the whole quantity of truth capable of being known. For, in that sense, all human knowledge is, and always has been, and always must be, superficial. What then is the standard? Is it the same two years together in any country? Is it the same, at the same moment, in any two countries? Is it not notorious that the profundity of one age is the shallowness of the next; that the profundity of one nation is the shallowness of a neighbouring nation? Ramohun Roy passed, among Hindoos, for a man of profound Western learning; but he would have been but a very superficial member of this Institute. Strabo was justly entitled to be called a profound geographer eighteen hundred years ago. But a teacher of geography, who had never heard of America, would now be laughed at by the girls of a boarding-school. What would now be thought of the greatest chemist of 1746, or of the greatest geologist of 1746? The truth is that, in all experimental science, mankind is, of necessity, constantly advancing. Every generation, of course, has its front rank and its rear rank; but the rear rank of a later generation occupies the ground which was occupied by the front rank of a former generation.