"Wm. Drury (aged 10 years.) 'I havn't been much to school, only on Sundays. I don't know who Jesus Christ was; I have never been told that. I don't know where I shall go if I'm a bad boy; I've not been taught that.'

"James Holmes (aged 12.) I read of Jesus Christ in the Testament; they tell me he was a shepherd. I don't know whether it is long since, or that he was on earth.'

"John Roper (aged 13.) "Jesus Christ was a shepherd; he came a hundred years ago on earth to receive sin; I don't know who the apostles are."

"Ann Hayne (aged 13.) They teach me to read in the Testament at the Sunday school. Jesus Christ was the Son of God; but I don't know what he came on

earth for.'

"George Glossop (aged 12.) 'I don't know whose son Jesus Christ was; but he was nailed on a cross. I don't know

what he came on earth for.'

"Bessy Bailey (aged 15.) "Jesus Christ died for his son to be saved. I don't know who the apostles were. I don't know what Ireland is, whether it is a country or a town.'

I

"Elizabeth Eggley (aged 16.) I cannot read. I do not know my letters. don't know who Jesus Christ was. I never heard of Adam either. never heard about them at all. I have often been obliged to stop in bed all Sunday to rest myself.'

"Elizabeth Day (aged 17.) I don't go to Sunday school. The truth is, we are confined bad enough on week days, and want to walk about on Sundays. I

can't read at all. Jesus Christ was Adam's son, and they nailed him on a tree; but I don't rightly understand these

Thus it is evident that that class of persons whose care should be bestowed upon the youthful population rising around them, know nothing, literally nothing, about them. As to the time when the children have to go to work in the morning, or leave in the evening; whether they stop to take a meal, or have none at all; whether they are educated or debased, they are profoundthemselves neither responsibility nor ly ignorant, and appear to attach to care, so long as they enjoy the comforts and affluence that their daily toil brings them. These White Slaves generally die prematurely of hunger, wet, cold, and sorrow. From the direct and indirect operation of these causes they die off by hundreds and thousands per annum. From infancy their food has been bad as well as insufficient. Too degraded to be desperate, they only become thoroughly depraved. Rheumatism and asthma finally conduct them to the workhouse, where they will breathe their last without one pleasant recollection, and so make room for other wretches, who may live and die in the same way.

But White Slavery is by no means confined to the factory or the coal mine, reared or sunk by the hand of man. It flourishes with equal felicity in the corn-field, the meadow, spread out by the hand of God. The peasantry of the North of England suffer nearly all the evils, but enjoy none of the advantages of slavery. They have large muscles, and upright mien, and a quick perception. With strength, energy, and skill, they would earn a comfortable subsistence as laborers, if the modern fashion of paying wages out of the poor-box did not interfere with the due course of things, and reduce all the laborers of a parish, the old and the young, the weak and the strong, the idle and the industrious, to that lowest rate of wages, or rather of weekly payment to each, which in each case is barely sufficient for the support of life. To show the condition of some of the English laborers, we shall quote the words of a popular British writer, William Howitt, whose love for his native land is too strong to permit him to say anything injurious to her reputation which Truth herself would not endorse. Look at the following picture of the field-gangs of

female slaves laboring under their

master:

"A person from the south or midland counties of England, journeying northward, is struck when he enters Durham, or Northumberland, with the sight of bands of women working in the fields under the surveillance of one man. One or two such bands, of from half-a-dozen women, generally young, might be passed over; but when they recur again and again, and you observe them wherever you go, they become a marked feature of the agricultural system of the country, and you naturally inquire how it is that such regular bands of female laborers prevail there. The answer, in the provincial tongue, is, 'O, they are the boneditchers,' i. e. Bondagers. Bondagers! that is an odd sound, you think, in England. What, have we bondage, a rural serfdom still existing in free and fair England? Even

So.

The thing is astounding enough, but it is a fact. As I cast my eyes for the first time on these female bands in the fields, working under their drivers, I was, before making any inquiry respecting them, irresistibly reminded of the slave gangs of the West Indies: turnip-hoeing somehow associated itself strangely in my brain with sugar-cane-dressing: but when I heard these women called Bondagers, the association became tenfold strong.

"On all large estates in these counties, and in the south of Scotland, the bondage system prevails. No married laborer is permitted to dwell on these estates unless he enters into bonds to comply with this system. These laborers are termed hinds. Small houses are built for them on the farms and on some of the estates, as those of the Duke of Northumberland. All these cottages are numbered, and the number is painted on the door. A hind, therefore, engaging to work on one of the farms belonging to the estate, has a house assigned him. He has £4 a year in money, the keep of a cow, his fuel found him, a prescribed quantity of coal, wood, or peat, to each cottage; he is allowed to plant a certain quantity of land with potatoes, and has thirteen bolls of corn furnished him for his family consumption; one-third being oats, one-third barley, and one-third peas. In return for these advantages, he is bound to give his labor the year round,

and also to furnish a woman laborer at 1s.

per day during the harvest, and 8d. per day for the rest of the year. Now it ap-. pears, at once, that this is no hereditary serfdom-such a thing could not exist in this country; but it is the next thing to it, and no doubt has descended from it, being serfdom in its mitigated form.

"The hiring for a year begins on the 28th of May. The farmer takes the man just at the season to get the sweat out of him; and if he dies, he dies when the main work is done. The laborer is wholly at the mercy of the master, who, if he will not keep him beyond the year, can totally ruin him by refusing him a character. And the necessity of character from the last employer makes the man a real slave, worse off than the negro by many degrees; for here there is neither law to ensure him relief, nor motive in the master to attend to his health, or to preserve his life.

"Let any one imagine a body of men, bound by one common interest, holding in their possession all the population of several counties, and subjecting their men to this rule. Can there be a more positive despotism? The hind is at the mercy of the caprice, the anger, or the cupidity of the man in whose hands he is; and if he dismiss him, where is he to go? As Cobbett justly remarks, he has NO HOME, and nothing but utter and irretrievable ruin is before him.

"A condition like this must generate a slavish character. Can that noble independence of feeling belong to a hind, which is the boast of the humblest Englishman, while he holds employment, home, character, everything, at the utter mercy of another?

"It is a system which wrongs all parties. It wrongs the hind, for it robs his children of comfort and knowledge;-it wrongs the farmer, for what he saves in labor he loses in rent, while he gains only the character of a task-master-and it wrongs the landholder, for it puts his petty pecuniary interest into the balance against his honor and integrity; and it causes him to be regarded as a tyrant, in hearts

where he might be honored as a natural

protector, and revered as a father."

And yet notwithstanding this powerful array of testimony, showing the degraded condition of the great bulk of the English people, British Tory journals would make us believe that England was the chosen home of freedom-that there she made her restingplace, and every Briton basked in her sunny smile! And by way of convincing us of that fact, they strain impression which a knowledge of our every nerve to counteract the favorable actual condition is likely to make upon the laboring and down-trodden portion of the population of Great Britain; many of whom yearly commit crimes for the avowed purpose of becoming

galley-slaves in New South Wales. They do not keep this purpose secret; but declare it loudly, with tears and passionate exclamations, to the magisirate who commits them for trial, to the jury who try them, and to the judge who passes sentence on them; and all this is published in the newspapers, but so often, that no one exclaims-"Great God, am I in 'merry England!" Well may judges on the bench talk of the misery and degradation of the people!

It is common to hear people say, "work like a negro-like a galley slave." But this is mere child's play compared with the working of a Lancashire weaver. There is no such work in France or America, even among slaves; all day long, from Monday morning till Saturday night, week after week, and year after year, till the machine is worn out. Talk of negro and galley-slaves-American slaves, or convicts in New South Wales, are fat and happy compared with many free-born Englishmen!

Some years ago, a mass of evidence was laid before parliament, touching the condition of children employed in factories, which describes a system of torture, compared with which the treatment of galley-slaves appears truly benevolent. When this evidence was published, the whole press of England repeated, day after day, that the worst kind of slavery existed in England. Children of tender years, it was shown, -babies they would be called in America, were shut up in factories during 12, 14, and 16 hours every week day, and there compelled to work incessantly, or as hard, at least, as their slight frames will permit, and for wages which but just satisfied their ruined appetites. The pale cheeks, parched lips, swollen stomachs, deformed limbs, and melancholy looks of these little wretches will be easily imagined. They died off with strange rapidity; but the places of those who perished were instantly filled, and a frequent change of persons made no alteration in the scene! If any lingered on to the first stages of manhood, they were easily recognizable by their calfless legs and stooping shoulders;-the premature wrinkles and furtive glances betrayed that weakness of mind and body, that inertness and pusillanimity, for

which the adult White Slaves of England are everywhere distinguished.

To remedy these evils, a law was proposed to fix within some limit, dictated by common humanity, the number of hours during which children might be employed in factories. This law, however, appears to have gone but very little way towards the mitigation of English Slavery; for, in the year 1842-the age of ultra refinement and civilisation,-when Moral Reform Societies go about with an insatiable curiosity searching the sewers of vice and immorality for statistics of crime,-when America and her institutions are slandered and attacked by British writers,-when Englishmen dwell with peculiar complacency upon the triumph of their efforts in the great cause of abolition,-when England boasts, à gorge deployée, of having wiped off from herself as a Christian nation the foul reproach and stain of slavery,-a report appears of the "Children and women's employment commission," which astounds all the civilized world with its frightful details of cruelty, violence, and desolationdetails unparalleled in the history of human serfdom, and exhibiting the most revolting spectacle that the legislator and the philanthropist, in their efforts to ameliorate the mental and moral condition of the poor, ever yet had to encounter!

The express objects of these investigations appear to have been, to collect information as to the ages at which the subjects of them are employed-the number of hours they are engaged in work, and the time allowed each day for meals;-as to their actual state, condition, and treatment; and as to the effect of such employment, both with regard to their moral and bodily healths. We cannot attempt to portray one tithe of the horrors which these "reports" exhume and exhibit. Suffice it to say, that the evidence by which they are attested, amply justífies the assertion of one of the commissioners, that, "now when the nature of this horrible labor is taken into consideration,-its extreme severity,its regular duration of from twelve to fourteen hours daily,-the damp, heated, and unwholesome atmosphere in which the work is carried on;-the tender age and sex of the workers;—

when it is considered that such labor is performed not in isolated instances selected to excite compassion, but that it may be truly regarded as the type of the every day existence of hundreds of our fellow-creatures,-a picture is presented of deadly physical oppression and systematic slavery, of which I conscientiously believe no one unacquainted with such facts would credit the existence in the British dominions." The age at which children are first taken into collieries, usually varies, in the thick coal-pits, from eight to ten; and in the thin ones, from seven to nine. Instances appear, however, by no means rare, where infants of six, and even five years of age, are taken to attend the trap-doors, and often at seven or eight, to assist an elder child in pushing the waggons; in all instances, the children remain as many hours, and not unfrequently more, in the pits than the adults. The reasons for this cruel incarceration of very young children, may be summed up; 1st, in the assertion, that unless early inured to the work and its terrors, the child would never make a collier; 2d, that the thin coal-pits could not possibly be worked with a profit otherwise, as, after a certain age, the vertebræ of the back do not so easily conform to the required posture; 3dly, that their parents cannot afford to keep them idle. It is universally remarked that the parents themselves bring their children at this early age of their own accord, and are frequently checked by benevolent employers. What is also worthy of observation, is, that coalproprietors rarely visit their collieries. Thus children are debarred from the benevolence of a master, who knows not of the need of its exertion; and thus the condition and safety of the laborers employed in a branch of industry eminently perilous, and, above all others, needing benevolent superintendence, is more than any other left, hidden and unheeded, to the mercy of a menial, whose power is exercised apart from the responsibility even of ordinary observation! This is what makes Mr. Symmons (another commissioner) observe, that "much suffering and overworking of children will continue to occur so long as the amount, duration, and nature of their work be left to the uncontrolled will of the colliers. In respect to age, in respect to

severity of work, and in respect to its duration, the children in mines are at the entire mercy of the individual workmen who hire them; their lot is dependent on the chance of his humanity or the impulse of his avarice."

But allowing that the life of a little collier child is, perhaps, one of the most dreary in the whole range of labor,-granting that there is something very oppressive at first sight in the employment of children hurrying all day in passages under 30 inches in height, and altogether not much above the size of an ordinary drain,-how shall we find terms in which to deprecate the brutality of subjecting females to similar degradation! And yet such appears to be equally the practice with both sexes. The practice of employing females in coal-pits is flagrantly disgraceful to a Christian as well as to a civilized country. Girls, some of whom were of the age of puberty, have been seen standing stark naked down to the waist with men in a complete state of nudity, and thus assist one another to fill the corves, eighteen or twenty times a day. In order that our readers may fully appreciate the enormity of these abuses, we will subjoin two extracts from the evidence given by these women and girls themelves:—

"Betty Harris (examined by Mr. Kennedy).---I was married at 23, and went into a colliery when I was married. I used to weave when about 12 years old.

I can neither read nor write. I work for Andrew Knowles, of Little Bolton, and make sometimes 7s. a week, sometimes not so much. I am a drawer, and work from six o'clock in the morning to six at night; stop about an hour at noon to eat my dinner; have bread and butter for dinner; I get no drink. I have two children, but they are too young to work. I worked at drawing when I was in the family way. I know a woman who has gone home and washed herself, taken to bed, been delivered of a child, and gone to work again under the week. I have a belt round my waist, and a chain passing between my legs, and I go on my hands and feet. The road is very steep, and we have to hold by a rope; and when there of. There are six women, and about six is no rope, by anything we can catch hold boys and girls in the pit I work in: it is very hard work for a woman. The pit is very wet where I work, and the water comes over our clog-tops always, and I have seen it up to my thighs: it rains in

at the roof terribly; my clothes are wet through almost all day long.'

me,

"Patience Kershaw (examined by Mr. Scriven).--- I wear a belt and chain at the working to get the corves out. The get ters are naked, except their caps; they pull off all their clothes. I see them at work when I go up. They sometimes beat if I am not quick enough, with their hands. They strike me upon my back. The boys take liberties with me sometimes; they pull me about. I am the only girl in the pit. There are 20 boys and 15 men. All the men are naked. I would rather work in the mill than the coal-pit.""

Such are ordinary practices prevailing just beneath the surface of a country where Christian sympathies and sensibilities are so delicate and intense, that not only do they roam over the globe in search of objects for philanthropy, but evoke fervor of compassion for the wrongs of Sunday coachmen and Sabbath shavers.

But let us not pass from the subject, sad and sorrowful as it is, without applying what we have laid before our readers to some other purpose beyond the mere retort upon the wanton insolence and injustice of our Edinburgh contemporary. There is another moral to be found in it well worthy of our own most serious contemplation.

And by what means, it may be asked, has this deplorable state of things been brought about? By restrictive laws, which decree that the people of the United Kingdom shall have no bread but that which is grown in the United Kingdom-laws which retard the gradual increase of capital, by rendering the producing faculties of the community less productive, and thus prevent that rapid accumulation of wealth in which alone is to be found the means of affording employment to an increasing population-laws which, in the eloquent language of the late Mr. Raguet, "operate precisely in the same manner as a law would operate which should enact that a man with two hands should only labor with onethat a farmer who could work with a plough should dig with a spade-that the owner of a cotton factory who has mules and spindles should spin with the distaff-that a wood-cutter should chop trees with a dull axe, instead of a sharp one-or, that a tailor should sew with a blunt needle, instead of a sharp-pointed one." This limited field

of production is, moreover, so full of capitalists, that these, by competing with each other, reduce profits to a very low rate; and so full of laborers, that these, by competing with each other, reduce wages to a very low rate also. If it were not for this severe competition among capitalists, a greaterdifference than actually exists between the prices of English and American corn would show the vast difference between the natural fertility of land in England and land in America: if it were not for the severe competition among laborers, English labor, which, from the mode in which it is employed, is so much more productive than American labor, in proportion to the number of hands, would be better paid, instead of being far worse paid than American labor. In England both classes, capitalists and laborers, are fighting for room. Consequently, it may be said that in England low profits and low wages are owing to the small proportion which the field of production continually bears to capital and labor.

It is fortunate that that great body corporate, styled a nation-a vast assemblage of human beings, knit together by laws and arts and customs, by the necessities of the present and the memory of the past-offers in this country, through these its vigorous and enduring members, a more substantial and healthy frame-work than falls to the lot of other nations. Our stoutbuilt constitution throws off with more facility and safety those crude and dangerous humors which must at times arise in all human communities. We are preserved from those reckless and tempestuous sallies that in other countries, like a whirlwind, topple down in an instant an ancient crown, or sweep away an illustrious aristocracy. And this very constitution which has secured order, has, consequently, promoted civilisation; and the almost unbroken tide of progressive amelioration has made us the freest, and may yet make us the wealthiest and most refined society of modern ages. But still the condition of the peasantry and the laboring population of the manufacturing districts is yet strongly susceptible of improvement. The present clamors of the Whig party to favor and foster the factory system among us are fraught with direful mischief.