the existing system; and while the proposed reform was brought forward by a liberal ministry, none were more eager for it than the landed interest, in and out of the House. If it was probable that the country justices would resent the restriction of their powers in their own province, it was certain that their neighbours the farmers-of the same politics-were sinking under the burden of the rates, and would welcome any prospect of relief. As it was not a party matter, it was impossible to divine how the newspapers would go. The only thing considered certain under this head was, that the Times-the great paper of all-was wholly in favour of the reform. One of the editors had, a few days previously, sent a message declaratory of intended support, to some of the managers of the measure. Up to the last moment, though the prospect was wholly uncertain, everything looked well. And at midnight of the 17th of April, everything looked better still. The chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Althorp, had obtained leave from the Commons to bring in the bill. His speech, plain, earnest, and impressive, had produced a strong effect upon the House, and his proposal had been respectfully greeted and warmly supported. The members went home, feeling convinced that the evils of the poorlaw system were virtually abolished, and that this 'great political gangrene of England' was successfully dealt with at last. When each of them took up the Times from the breakfast-table, the next morning, to gratify himself with the study of its advocacy of the measure-an advocacy sure to be more finely expressed than any that could be heard elsewhere-what was the amazement to find a thundering article against the measure! It became known afterwards that the change in the mind of the Times had taken place at the very last moment. It was naturally declared and believed to be owing to evidence received of the hostility of the country justices to the measure; and the country justices were not only the great provincial support of the Times newspaper, but composed an influence too important to be lightly regarded. Whatever might be the reason, the Times newspaper certainly did, at the last moment, change its mind about supporting the new poor-law. The fact-of the suddenness of the change in connection with the temper of the new opposition, is worth noting, as illustrative of the character of newspaper support or opposition in our day. The side which the Times would take was a chance pregnant with good and evil consequences which will influence the fate of whole generations. The hostility has been so venomous, so unscrupulous, so mischievous in one direction, and so beneficial in others, so pertinacious, so vigilant, and so remarkably based upon the aristocratic error before alluded toof confusing all ranks below a certain level-that it could not be passed over in the history of a time when the press is admitted to be our fourth estate. Before London had breakfasted, a wealthy member of the Commons was in the city, with a friend, and had bought the Morning Chronicle; and comrades were beating about for writers of the leading articleswriters well familiarised with the new measure. The consternation of the ministers was not small. There was to be a cabinet council that day; and the lord chancellor wrote a note to Lord Althorp, to insure his attendance, as it was to be considered whether the Times should be propitiated or defied. Some expressions were added, not very complimentary to the editor who had lately offered support. Some tidings having arrived from Lord Althorp which rendered the note unnecessary, it was torn up, and the scraps thrown among waste papers under the table. Some mischievous person picked them up, pasted them in order, and sent them to the person remarked on, who was not propitiated by what he read. From that hour, the virulence with which the leading paper pursued the lord chancellor, the new poor-law, and the parties concerned in its preparation, exceeded any hostility encountered by the Whig government from any other quarter, and certainly had no small effect in impairing their much-weakened influence and popularity, and in impeding the working of poor-law reform. The mischief done was by the dishonesty of the paper in constantly misrepresenting the enactments and operation of the new law; in imputing to it the faults of the old system which it was actually in course of remedying; in fostering the prejudices, and perpetuating the mischievous powers, of the least enlightened of the country justices; in upholding the cause of the unworthy among the indigent, by confounding them with the worthy among the poor; in short, by a partial and unscrupulous and unintermitting hostility to a measure which had its faults, but which was not only necessary in its time, but an eminent glory of its time, and which it would have been a moral benefit to Englishmen to appreciate better than they have done. The good effected by this hostility has, on the other hand, been very great. Bad as has been its temper and principle, it has acted in the name of humanity, and it has done some of the best work of humanity. Nothing in the shape of an abuse, a hardship, or a levity in the treatment of the poor, has it ever let pass. It has incessantly been unjust, and more cruel than the persons and usages it denounced; but it has induced a spirit of watchfulness and a sense of responsibility in official men; it has evoked a spirit of humanity in society, for which the whole class of sufferers may be grateful, and for the sake of which the most feeling moralists may subdue their natural and wellgrounded resentment, and cheerfully acquiesce in the results which will remain when the warfare and all its disgraces, on every hand, are forgotten. On the 14th of August 1834, the royal assent was given to the Poor-law Amendment Act, amidst prognostications of utter failure from the timid, and some misgivings among those who were most confident of the absolute necessity of the measure. These last knew that it was either now or never. When a member in the Commons complained of the short time allowed for the consideration of the Lords' amendments, Lord Althorp declared that he would be a bold man who should bring forward the bill in another session, after it had once been dropped. It is true-and the fact was repeatedly brought forward in the course of the debate-the abuses of the poor-law were almost all under forty CHAP. VII.] OPERATION OF NEW POOR-LAW-FACTORY CHILDREN. years old; and the present object was rather to restore the principle and revert to the operation of the law of Elizabeth than to establish a new system; but still, there was the great and fearful fact before all men's eyes of the demoralisation of the peasantry; of their moral and social state being so bad, in many parts of the country, that it was a grave question whether they could be retrieved. It must be now or never. It appeared from the reports that a remnant still existed of the peasant order as it was before the corruption of the poor-law; a few hearty old men between sixty and eighty, sprinkled through the country parishes, who had, for the forty years of misrule, talked of the good old times, and turned away from the pay-table with a disgust which would operate well now, while the new purification was going forward. Of these, there would be fewer every year; and the advantage of their presence was certainly an additional reason why the reform should not be delayed. The bill became law; the law came into speedy operation; for a time, long enough to secure the reform, the seasons were kind, and events were favourable. Everybody was not convinced-and everybody is not convinced yetof the blessedness of the retrieval we have enjoyed. There are many who charge upon the new law the abuses of the old, and the difficulties which attend upon the very institution of a poor-law; there are many who charge upon the law itself some gross faults in parts of its administration; there are many who will never be satisfied till every poor person is thoroughly comfortable in his own home-a virtuous aspiration, but one not to be fulfilled by a poor-law of any nature; but there are also many who think with a kind of shudder what our condition would have been by this time under the old law, or a less stringent reform. The facts which all men might know, if they would, are, that before two years were out, wages were rising and rates were falling in the whole series of country parishes; farmers were employing more labourers; surplus labour was absorbed; bullying paupers were transformed into steady working-men; the decrease of illegitimate births, chargeable to the parish, throughout England, was nearly 10,000, or nearly 13 per cent.; clergymen testified that they were relieved from much of the pain and shame of having to celebrate marriages where the bride was on the point of becoming a mother, or where the parties were mere children, with no other prospect than the parish pay-table; and, finally, the rates, which had risen nearly a million in their annual amount during the five years before the poor-law commission was issued, sank down, in the course of the five years after it, from being upwards of seven millions to very little above four. After that time, when a long period of severe distress ensued, the new law was found insufficient-pending the maintenance of the corn-laws, it must be remembered-to deal with the needs of our large manufacturing towns, as any other poor-law would have been. Of this we shall have to speak under its own date, as also of the changes found to be necessary in the application of the Amendment Act; but, from first to last, its operation in the rural districts has been not only 379 This salutary, but nothing short of salvation. The poor-law inquiry was not the only one which disclosed facts of guilt and misery in our social state which might have lain concealed under the excitements of war, but which became gradually revealed amidst the quietude of peace. The poor-law commissioners had discovered how brutal and wretched was the condition of the children of rural labourers in too many districts of the country; of children who struggled with the pigs for food during the day-doing nothing useful, learning nothing which raised them above the beasts of the field; and at night huddled down on damp straw, under a roof of rotten thatch; or went out to carry poached game, or fire the farmers' stacks. Another picture, equally mournful, was presented from the factory districts. Throughout the manufacturing districts, in ordinary years, there ought to be a sufficient provision for all who are not behind their times; like the poor handloom weavers, who would have power-looms put down, to give them work. Such cannot be effectually aided; but among other classes, if there were sense, knowledge, and goodness, there need have been no poverty at the time we speak of. This knowledge and goodness, however, are what the nation has taken no pains to cultivate in the mass, and to diffuse among the classes which are least able to desire them for themselves; and hence has arisen the misery, the unspeakable disgrace, of the corruption of the parental relation among large numbers of our people. At the time now under review, it became known that parents sold their children to excessive labour; and it has since become known that a considerable number have sold them to death through the burial-clubs— actually poisoned them for the sake of the burialmoney, after entering the clubs for the very pur pose. When Mr Sadler and Lord Ashley brought forward the subject of the oppression of the factory children in 1833, the question of legal protection to these children was as difficult a one as could be brought under the notice of any ministry and parliament. It is admitted by the most sagacious to be an insoluble difficulty. By guilty neglect we had brought ourselves into an inextricable embarrassment, which has become only more apparent, and not less perplexing to deal with, during all the discussion which has taken place from that day to this. Amidst much legislation which has been ventured upon, the question is apparently as far as ever from being settled-the great question, whether effectual legislation is possible between parents and children, and in defiance of the great natural laws which regulate the operation of labour and capital. By our guilty neglect we had placed in abeyance the still greater natural laws of the human heart, which alone can overrule economical laws; and now we were reduced to try the fearful experiment whether, by interposing thus late with feeble arbitrary decrees and arrangements, we were likely to mitigate or aggravate the existing evil. Here were children-little creatures whose life should have been spent in growing, in body and mind-employed all day and far into the night, in the monotonous and stupifying work of spinning in the mills. Most of the mills were found to be fairly wholesome; the owners were not oppressors; the pay was good; the work was not in itself severe, or otherwise objectionable; and all representations of the case as, generally speaking, worse than this, were found to be untrue. But it was too true that the parents let out their children to that class of middlemen, the spinners, from whom neither the care of parents nor the consideration of educated masters was to be looked for; and the children were kept too long standing-too long awake-too long on the stretch over work which was not in itself of a hurtful nature. People who thought only of the children's instant welfare, and not of the considerations of justice and of actual practicability with which the case was complicated, clamoured for a law which should restrict the hours of labour, and determine the ages of the persons who should be employed in the cotton and silk mills. Economists shewed how vain had always been, and must ever be, laws to regulate labour and wages. Statesmen knew how vain it was to interfere by law with private relations; and the mill-owners complained of the injustice of arbitrarily raising wages; while this was exactly the prospect which delighted the operatives. They began to see before them a long perspective of legal protection and privilege, by which they as well as their children should obtain the same wages for less and less work, while too few of them perceived that any law which should deprive them of the free disposal of their own labour would steal from them their only possession, and be in fact a more flagrant oppression than any law had inflicted on their order for centuries. Such was the diversity of opinion in society in 1833, when a demand was made in parliament for an act which should regulate the labour of children in factories. The ministers were fully aware of the difficulty in which they stood, and they endeavoured to satisfy all parties, at the expense of the smallest amount of mischief. They sent out a commission to obtain evidence and report. When the time came for the commissioners to report and suggest, it was clear that their convictions were just what might have been expected. The evil of overworking children was clear. Though there were fewer swollen joints, shrunken limbs, and distorted spines, than had been represented, there was far too much of stunted growth, and far too little of the character of natural childhood, among those who were called 'the victims of the factory system,' but who were, in fact, the victims of their parents' poverty or heartlessness. But could a cure be found in a mere law? The commissioners thought not. They foresaw that there would be false swearing about the children's ages, and deception in many ways that no law could obviate or detect; the parents from whom children needed protection being exactly those who would have least scruple about deception and perjury. But the commissioners had not to decide whether there should be a law or not. It was evidently settled that there should be one; and what the commissioners had to do therefore was, first, to suggest the best kind of law under the circumstances, and next, to introduce and promote by it the measures in which they believed the remedy really to lie. About one of the remedies they could do nothing-that free importation of food which ought naturally at once to accompany a free circulation of labour, and to obviate all restrictions on it. The next most important, the education of the children, they thought they could introduce under the head of factory arrangements. The measure of education would be but small, and its quality but poor, if instituted in a way so indirect as this, and as an ostensibly subordinate object; but the commissioners thought that any educational training was better than none, and that they could but try for this collateral success, convinced as they were that the measure must fail in its professed object. They therefore proposed that the children should be secured from working for more than half the day by being placed at school, and certified to be there during some hours of the other half. The Factory Bill of 1833 has received so many alterations since, that it would be useless to give a minute account of its provisions. It is enough to say that, except in silk-mills, no child under nine years of age was to be employed at all; children under eleven were not to be employed more than nine hours in any one day, nor more than forty-eight hours in one week; and after a time, this provision extended to children under thirteen years of age. School attendance was provided for, the cost-not to exceed 1d. in the 1s.-to be paid out of the child's wages, if the mill-owner desired it. Medical supervision was ordered; and four factory inspectors were appointed, to watch over the operation of the act. This was the beginning of that legislation protective of factory labour which has gone on to this day; the opening of a great controversy which is far from being concluded, and whose consequences lie deep in a future which no man now living shall see. CHAPTER VIII. HERE were two matters of great importance which must be considered at this time, whoever might be in or out of power, and whatever might be happening, at home or abroad. The two great charters, of the India Company and of the Bank of England, were to expire in 1834, and it must be timely determined whether they were to be renewed, and on what conditions. As has been notified, a parliamentary committee had already been appointed, and had begun its work of inquiring into the claims and affairs of the India Company. On the 22d of May 1832, the chancellor of the exchequer proposed a similar inquiry in regard to the Bank of England. This last committee was, however, a CHAP. VIII.] RENEWAL OF THE BANK CHARTER. secret one, for the obvious reason that disclosures on currency subjects, for a succession of months, with uncertainty at the end of it, would embarrass all commercial transactions. The committee sat, and diligently pursued its inquiry during the rest of the session, offering its report on the 11th of August. This committee was appointed on the fifth day after the return of Lord Grey and his colleagues to power; and it began its abstract and passionless work while words were running high in the other House between Lords Kenyon and Grey, and while the remnant of anti-reforming peers were undergoing defeat as often as they adventured a division on the clauses of the Reform Bill. Such were the days when the bank committee sat, and when the very eminent men who were in it were preparing a report of extraordinary value. They felt the seriousness of their work; and well they might. The last renewal of the exclusive privileges of the bank had taken place in 1800, when the term assigned was a year's notice after the 1st of August 1833; and during that interval what vicissitudes and alarms had taken place!-what warnings of the disastrous nature of errors in currency matters, and of the magnitude of the interests now to be involved in an engagement for another term of years! The distresses of 1814, the crisis of 1819, and the crash of 1825-6, were fresh in the recollection of several members of the committee, and a matter of deep interest to all; and under this stimulus, they so exerted themselves that their report is considered-in connection with the evidence on which it is founded-the most important instrument towards the establishment of sound principles of banking as yet offered to the government and people of England. Among others, there were on the committee, Sir Robert Peel, Mr Poulett Thomson, Sir Henry Parnell, Mr John Smith, Mr Baring, Mr Warburton, Mr Morrison, Mr Bonham Carter, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer-statesmen, financiers, economists, and practical men of business. What they had to investigate was this: whether the paper-money of London should be limited to the issues of one bank, or whether a competition of issues should be allowed; whether all the exclusive privileges of the Bank of England were necessary, supposing it to be still the only bank of issue in London; and what checks were desirable to secure the public from danger from banks of issue, and especially whether a periodical publication of accounts would be a benefit or a disadvantage. On these points, the committee gave a vast amount of information, without any imposition of decided opinions of their own. They did all that time and circumstances allowed in laying before parliament the fullest materials for a judgment, and in venturing to reveal the exact state of the affairs of the Bank of England, thereby breaking up the system of mystery which had hitherto been one of the dangerous privileges of the bank corporation. Up to this date, the directors had preserved the most cautious secrecy about their affairs, declaring dividends, year after year, upon their own arbitrary judgment, without any sanction of publicity. Now, however, the House of Commons printed the report of the secret committee; and it was understood that darkness would 381 never again be allowed to settle down on the transactions of the great corporation. A new charter was granted, terminable 'at any time upon twelve months' notice to be given after the 1st of August 1855;' and the privileges of the bank might cease sooner, upon the fulfilment of certain conditions by the country; one of which was the repayment by parliament of upwards of eleven millions, owing by the public to the bank. The bank retained, under the new charter, the chief of its old privileges; and one principal new advantage in a restriction on all other banks, having more than six partners, from issuing notes or bills within sixtyfive miles of London. A great convenience was also afforded to the bank by its notes, and the notes of its branches, being made a legal tender everywhere but at the bank and its branches. By this provision, the bank was saved the expense, inconvenience, and risk of having to keep up, all over the kingdom, stocks of bullion to meet any run which might occur in any direction, at any time. There was some alarm at first among half-informed people about this provision, which was regarded as countenancing a sort of inconvertible paper-currency; but the holders were in fact in exactly the same position as before in regard to the convertibility of the notes, while new facilities were, at the same time, added for obtaining cash in any of its forms from the bank, by the establishment of new branches. All branch notes were made payable only at their place of issue. Weekly returns of bullion and of notes in circulation were to be sent in to the chancellor of the exchequer, in order to publication in the London Gazette-a provision of publicity which has worked so well as to be carefully renewed, after ten years of trial. One-fourth of the debt due from the public to the bank was immediately paid, by an assignment of stock previously held by the commissioners of the national debt. In consideration of its new privileges, the bank was to deduct £120,000 per annum from its charge for the business of conducting the national debt affairs. At the time of this inquiry, the total receipts of the bank for the year were £1,689,176; and its expenses somewhat under £500,000; leaving £1,164,235 to be divided among the proprietors. The establishment employed about 1000 persons, and supported 193 pensioners; the average receipts of the 1000 functionaries being £225 each, and those of the pensioners £161 each. Such were the state and constitution of the Bank of England on the granting of the new charter of 1834. It will be seen hereafter how the never-ceasing changes of commercial affairs, and the imperfection of the best knowledge on the great subject of the circulating medium, compelled in ten years a remodelling of the constitution of the bank, with a provision for another change, if necessary, in ten years more. For these further arrangements, an essential preparation was made by the new provision for publicity; by the establishment of more branches, with better security against a disastrous local drain; and by the thought and knowledge brought to bear upon the subject in the investigations and discussions of 1832 and 1833. A more striking change than any in the constitu tion of the bank could be to society at large took place at the same time. For nearly two centuries and a half, the merchant-vessels of the East India Company had traversed the seas, before the eyes of the world. This magnificent association had formed the link between the barbarism of the past and distant, and the civilisation of the future in its home; and now it was to be quietly let drop as useless-the east and the west having come into a communication which should now be left free. The commerce of this corporation, which had once been altogether a facility, had become a monopoly; and the changes of centuries required that it should be broken up. So the Company remain princes, but no longer merchant-princes. About a quarter of a century before the time now under notice, a Liverpool merchant, the most honoured of his class, Mr William Rathbone, was in London, and struck with the spectacle of the Company's shipping, he inquired of a London merchant at his elbow, why such a trade-a trade so great, and so capable of unlimited expansion was quietly left to be the property of a corporation. His friend replied by convincing him of the overwhelming power of the Company in London, under whose shadow no discontent could stir with impunity; and the two agreed that whenever any movement was made, it must be in the provinces. Mr Rathbone was not a man to loiter over any work which he saw ought to be done. He stirred up Liverpool, Glasgow, Paisley, and Manchester, to demand an opening of the trade; and the movement had proceeded so far before 1813, when the Company's charter was to expire, that a considerable relaxation of the monopoly was then obtained. From that time British merchants were permitted to trade to the territories of the Company, and India generally, though none but the Company might traffic with China. During the next twenty years, the doctrine of free-trade had been elaborated and partially practised; the demand for tea had largely increased in England; those who had visited the United States could tell what a variety of Chinese productions they had seen in the houses of the Salem merchants, and in the shops of New York, and how much they had heard of the desire of thickly peopled China for a supply of European and American productions; and the demand for a complete opening of the eastern seas had become too strong to be resisted. By the charter of 1813, the Company had been bound to keep their territorial and commercial accounts separate; and on their first examination, it was clear that they could not for a moment compete with private merchants in supplying India with manufactured goods, to the advantage of both parties. In fifteen years, the Company's exports of manufactured cottons to India had dwindled to almost nothing, while those of private merchants exceeded in value a million and a half per annum, and were still on the increase. After all that the English public had been told of the immutability of Hindoo habits, and the impossibility of any great expansion of trade, it became clear that the Hindoos, like other people, would stretch out their hands to obtain good and comfortable things, if only such things were placed within their reach. Bishop Heber's journals were by this time published; and they told of the strong disposition of both Hindoos and Mohammedans in India to imitate the English, and obtain whatever was necessary to enable them to assume an English mode of living; he tells of jackets and trousers, shoes and stockings, round hats, English furniture, French devices and mottoes on jewellery, English hardware, crockery, writingdesks, arms, and clothing-not only in and near Calcutta, but in remote provincial towns. This much having been proved, the commercial world did not attend to what the Company now said of the immutability of Chinese habits, and the impossibility of any great expansion of trade there. It was time to try. The Company took warning by their experience of the results of competition with private enterprise in India, and did not insist upon renewing the experiment in China. Their age as traders was past; and they now retired upon their territorial dignity, leaving a large section of the world open to British commerce. It was a striking event to a multitude of people at home, and to many abroad. Almost everybody reckoned on having cheap tea, and plenty of it; and some anticipated that a few houses in London and our principal ports might soon have curiosities to shew like those of Salem and New York; elegant matting, a variety of serviceable silks, extraordinary toys, and Chinese copies of English prints-a miracle of painstaking. Many, it may be hoped, thought of the blessing to the Chinese of new means and opportunities of civilisation; and some, of the effect upon the relations of the whole world of the throwing open the intercourse between the east and the west, which, whether cursed with a war at the outset or not, was certainly necessary to an ultimate condition of fraternisation and peace. In this view, one point was of eminent interest to some of the best people living in the world. In these newly opened countries of the east, there are wide regionsbroad belts of soil and climate-fitted for the production of sugar and cotton. It is the limitation of the area for the production of sugar and cotton which protracts the existence of negro slavery. It is well to use all possible means of appeal to the justice and humanity of men, to induce an abolition of negro slavery; but here was another opening for hope and enterprise. If slavery were not abolished sooner, it certainly must be by a cheaper production of sugar and cotton in the east by free labour than can be accomplished in the west by slave labour. No such possibility existed while the India Company held the east in their hand: but now the prospect seemed to be opening; and in this view, again, the date of the expiration of the Company's charter might be one of high importance in the history of the world. By the act of 1833, the charter was renewed for twenty years, during which time the territorial government remains in the hands of the Company. From the 22d of April 1834, the China and tea trade of the Company was to cease, and all its commercial concerns were to be wound up, and its commercial property sold. All the restrictions |