of manufacturing processes is aware has no existence, and can have no existence, in a cotton-mill.

There is nothing new under the sun! Some two centuries ago it pleased the sages in the rest of England to get up a farce of extraordinary commiseration for the unfortunate people of Lancashire: it was spread abroad that the Devil had taken adverse possession of the Palatine Duchy, to the prejudice of the rights of Queen Elizabeth, and that he had organized a staff of wizards and witches, who inflicted the most fearful sufferings on all that refused allegiance to his Satanic Majesty. All the soft hearts in England were moved; pocket handkerchiefs, that might have served for sails to a man of war, were saturated with tears; and sighs were heaved of sufficient strength to blow those sails across the Atlantic. The usurer locked up the plunder of widows and orphans, and had not time to hear their starving cries, because he was going to pray for the relief of the bewitched; the magistrate ordered the shivering vagrant to the whipping-post, while he shed tears for those who vomited pins and needles in Pendleton; the buccaneer relieved his reminiscences of murder by anxious cares for those whose butter was prevented from churning, or whose milk was whisked away, by the spells of demons. All persons of good and easy circumstances buttoned their pockets against the misery by which they were surrounded, but poured out, not merely a

flood, but a deluge of cheap pity on the suffering population of Lancashire. Beggars were starved, wretches were flogged, trade went down, food went up, the misery of the community increased with accelerated velocity, but every cry of distress was drowned by the one unmeaning cry against the witches of Lancashire.

Common sense, sooner or later, regains its ascendency: after large sums had been spent in special commissions, ropes, and tar-barrels,—after some scores of innocent people had been hanged, burned, or drowned, and after some pretty pickings, in the shape of forfeitures, had been divided among the ravens, parrots, and magpies, as a reward for their expenditure of words,-it pleased the government to inquire whether the asserted witchcraft had any existence, and, this being soon decided in the negative, the whole delusion was at an end, and the quack philanthropists of the day had to seek some other vent for their superabundant stores of mock benevolence.

The logic of a popular cry is truly admirable: it 'passes sentence on a conclusion after having adjourned all consideration of the premises, and draws inference from inference with rhetorical speed, totally regardless of such a trifling consideration as the preliminary establishment of the fact. But the effect of such logic is not to be measured by its absurdity: had the results of the Factory Bill been confined to ́providing a few comfortable appointments for some

very respectable gentlemen, people might be content to laugh at it; but it was employed with considerable effect to prevent the great body of the nation from being affected by the cries of suffering from fiscal regulations which were just beginning to be heard from the manufacturing districts, and strangely enough the pretended wrongs endured by the young were made an excuse for inflicting actual starvation on the old.

During the course of my life I have had to contend against two cries equally nonsensical, and, for a time, equally influential,-mutilation of children and mutilation of the Scriptures. The latter is, indeed, dead and buried. 'The Dublin Christian Examiner,' the loudest in raising the cry, has had the grace to turn round upon its followers, and not only laugh them in the face as fools and dupes, but also scold them in good set terms for perversely maintaining the opposition which it had itself preached as the most essential duty of all genuine Christians. We are just about to receive an equally edifying display on the subject of infant labour; you will find that some who were the loudest in canting will now be the foremost in recanting, and we shall see the proved abominations of mines treated with a leniency refused to the disproved aberrations of factories.

All honour be to Lord Ashley! If he succeeds with his Bill he will put a check to the sacrifice of health, morals, and life, which has been going on to an enor

mous extent beneath the surface of the earth; and if he fails, he will still have thoroughly exposed the baseness of that pseudo-philanthropy which endeavours to pervert the best feelings of the heart to the basest of political purposes.

THE attention of the public has been much directed to the state of crime in this town, especially since the publication of Mr. Neale's able pamphlet on Juvenile Delinquency in Manchester. Through the kindness of Sir Charles Shaw I have obtained very accurate statistical details on this subject, part of which I shall lay before your Lordship in a tabular form, before I make any comment or observation on them. The first is a TABLE showing the DEGREE OF INSTRUCTION, Age, and Sex of the PERSONS taken into CUSTODY, SUMMARILY CONVICTED or HELD TO BAIL, and TRIED AND CONVICTED, in the year 1841.

Of the magnitude of the offences in the third class some notion may be formed from their sentences :1 was transported for life; 21 for 15 years; 8 for 14 years; 37 for 10 years; 83 for 7 years: 5 were imprisoned for 2 years; 61 for periods between 1 and 2 years; 160 for periods between 6 and 12 months;