of Dissenters to the public funds for educational purposes; and how unacceptable to the Dissenters was the idea of compulsory education at all. The difficulty now was that the proposed compulsory education was to be provided for that class-for the children of the manufacturing districts-where the interest of the Dissenters was strongest; while the agricultural classes-the neglected charge of the Church-were left over for a future measure. It ought to be acknowledged on every hand that here was a call for magnanimity all round. It was an occasion for the Church to acknowledge her neglect, and hasten to repair it. It was an occasion for the Dissenters to be modest about their much greater exertions for the education of their own members in the large towns, in consideration of the vast deal which it was not in their power to do. It was an occasion for all parties bravely to face the fearful truth of the amount of popular ignorance, and to decide deliberately whether it was best for all to yield some of their desires about doctrinal religious instruction, or for hundreds of thousands of children to pass off into utter darkness—ignorant not only of all religious doctrine whatever, but of the plainest truths and practices of morals. The Church was more equal to the occasion than the Dissenters. The Church yielded more than she had ever offered before to the consciences of Dissenters; and, when the Dissenters threw out the educational part of the government scheme, the Church set vigorously to work to raise funds by voluntary subscriptions, for the extension and improvement of the National Church Schools. Whatever may be thought of the quality of the education given in those schools, indisputable proof was afforded in the exertions of the Church during 1843, of the earnestness of the desire of the Church for the education of the people, as she conceived of education. The Dissenters at the same time appear to have erred-naturally, perhaps, but widely and fatally. In their fear of 'compromise-a fear usually so honourable and so wise they forgot that this was a case in which loss of time was fatal. They had been right hitherto in rejecting measures of religious liberty which had anything unsound in them-in waiting from year to year for a perfect Marriage Bill, for instance, rather than put up with a partial one; but in the present case, every year of delay removed thousands of children beyond the reach of education, and thus consigned them to risks and injury immeasurably more fatal than any kind or degree of religious error could possibly have been. Some of the Dissenters saw and felt this, and perceived it to be their duty to take the most liberal scheme they could obtain in the first place, try to enlarge it afterwards, and continue to prosecute their voluntary efforts as before, so as to make the government measure a supplement to their own exertions, instead of a substitute for them. This, however, required a magnanimity of which all were not capable; and the large majority of the Dissenters were led away to overrate the extent and quality of the education they could impart; to overlook the large area where they could not work at all; and to disregard or deny the great truth that the voluntary principle

is inapplicable to education, because it is precisely those who need education most that are least capable of demanding it, desiring it, and even conceiving of it. The opposition of the Dissenters prevailed. The opportunity was lost of taking the Church in a genial and liberal mood, and of providing for the children of various sects being reared as brethren, while instructed each in the doctrine of his own communion. All that was possible was done for the perpetuating of sectarian rancour, and for hounding on ignorance and bigotry to new assaults on the innocence and peace of society. By this mistake, it is now pretty well understood that the Dissenters lost more in character and influence than they can regain in a long course of years; and, with all their large promises, sincere but rash, they have done nothing effectual in the way of substitution for the measure they rejected.

The outline of the government measure was this. Factory children had been legislated for before, as we have seen; and, as was anticipated, such legislation had been inoperative. It was now proposed that factory children between the ages of eight and thirteen should not work for more than six hours and a half per day; that they should be obliged to attend schools provided for the purpose; the children of Churchmen, Catholics, and Dissenters, being committed, for certain appointed hours in every week, to the charge of their respective pastors, for religious instruction according to the creed of their parents. The measure was enlarged so as to include all pauper children in the towns, and all other children whose parents would consent to their entering the schools. Thus the larger proportion of children then uneducated was provided for; and a promise was held out of an extension of the system to include the neglected part of the agricultural population, in a short time. As there was nothing here which need interfere with any existing schools, and as the most careful provision was made for the equality within the schools of children of all sects, there would really have been nothing for the Dissenters to protest against if it had not been for the trusteeship provision. There were to be seven trustees to each school under the act; four of whom were to be elective, but the other three must be the clergyman of the district and two churchwardens. This would almost necessarily yield a majority of Church trustees over Dissenters; but as it is difficult to see how any freer arrangement could be offered in a society where an Established Church exists at all, the opposition to it amounted to a declaration that there should be no general scheme of education in coexistence with an establishment; and the prospect of popular education was postponed to the day when the Church should be overthrown as an establishment.

Within the House, all went well. Lord J. Russell, while offering some few objections, gave the scheme his hearty support as a whole; and men of all faiths and parties shewed themselves disposed to concede what was necessary to the accomplishment of the object. The queen's reply to the address was cordial. But presently the Dissenters were up and stirring in opposition; and their speeches at public meetings, and the language of some of their petitions,

CHAP. VII.]

evinced a misconception of the measure which shewed that it was doomed. The remainder of the session would not suffice for disabusing those who had been so unaccountably misled about the facts of the measure. An inquirer here and there had the curiosity to ascertain how many, of all the alarmed Dissenters he was acquainted with, had seen the bill, or learned for themselves what its provisions really were; and scarcely an instance was found of any one having obtained his information at first hand. It was a case of panic; and the result was shewn in circulars full of misstatements, in public meetings full of violence, and in the presentation of such a mass of petitions against the bill as had never been seen in modern times. On the 1st of May, Sir James Graham brought forward explanations and some important amendments, enlarging the number of trustees, and so altering the wording of the bill as to make clear the entire independence of the children of different sects, in regard to religious instruction and worship. But it was useless to explain and concede. Nearly 200 petitions against the bill were presented by one member in one day; and Lord J. Russell was charged with one from the city of London, signed by 55,000 persons. On the 15th of June, Sir James Graham announced, with deep regret, that the government felt itself compelled to give up the educational clauses of the bill; and on the 19th, he proposed to carry forward the rest of the measure.

At the beginning of the next session, accordingly, Sir James Graham introduced a Factory Bill, divested of the education clauses; and it was the fate of this bill which indicated the uncertain mind and temper of the House in regard to Lord Ashley's philanthropic enterprises. When this bill went into committee, Lord Ashley moved a clause by which the working-day for women and young persons was reduced from twelve to ten hours. In the course of his speech, he made statements which shewed that he did not understand the nature of the labour employed in the cotton manufacture any more than the great natural laws which regulate labour and production. In this speech, he went too far for the government, as well as the economist party, though he was supported by the many who indulge feeling at the expense of reason, and in indolence of thought -by the same sort of men as formerly strove to regulate wages, food, and dress by act of parliament. Sir James Graham opposed him with pain, seeing how the very subsistence of two millions of people was concerned in any legislation which should tamper with the cotton manufacture-that great branch of industry which had been introduced under a system of freedom from parliamentary interference. James Graham not only saw this as an economist, but he felt his responsibility, as secretary for the home department, in regard to any legislative interference which might affect the maintenance of two millions of people. He saw the consequences of abridging 'by one-sixth the whole period allowed for the replacement of capital and the production of profit; and he would not venture the risk of a corresponding reduction of the wages of the workpeople. The men must stop work when the women

Sir

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and boys stopped; and such a legislative interference with the natural course of manufacture was not to be adventured for any reasons which had been alleged. The thing to be done was clear to his mind -to educate the people, so as to enable them to take care of their one great property, their labour; and not to deprive them by law of the disposal of that, their only property. To provide by law leisure and opportunity for children to be educated was one thing; to stop the labour of working-men by restricting the labour of their wives was another; and he must oppose all interference which was, in fact, tyranny under the name of humanity. These were also the views of Sir R. Peel; and the government was considered so far pledged against Lord Ashley's motion as that the majority of nine which he obtained at first was considered a serious defeat.

There was a hope still. When the eighth clause came to be discussed, Lord Ashley would have to move the substitution of ten hours for twelve; and government would proceed that far with the bill, in hope that the House would reconsider this important matter. When the time came, the House voted in a way which shewed that it did not understand the business before it. There was a majority of three against the proposal of twelve hours; and then, immediately after, a majority of seven against ten hours. Sir James Graham said that as the House would not consent to the term of either ten or twelve hours, the government must take time to consider what could be done next. The result was that Lord Ashley gave way, permitting government to withdraw the bill, and bring in another, which was the same in all respects, except that it contained no clause specifying the hours of labour. On the third reading of the new bill, Lord Ashley moved that the hours of labour should be restricted to eleven per day for three years from the next October, and to ten from that time forward. The debate reads strangely to any one familiar with the life and lot of the working-classes. A multitude of the operatives who had petitioned for a ten-hour bill had been tempted by the placards which were seen all over Manchester: Less work. More wages. Sign for ten hours.' But now, the ten-hour men in the House talked glibly of the way in which the inevitable reduction of wages would be compensated by moral advantages; and of the ease with which par liament could retrace its steps, if the reduction should be found to go too far. The opponents of this rash and meddling legislation declared themselves appalled at the prospect of diminished wages, of which their opponents talked so lightly, and about which they desired to leave the working-class no choice; and it was pointed out that if the step was retraced, it would be on account of the fatality— which would then have become irreparable-of the loss of our foreign trade. Sooner than this could happen, however, as experienced men felt and said, the law would be evaded, and, by some means or other, practically set aside; for no law could work in defiance of the needs of capitalists and labourers; and then we should have perpetrated the unspeakable mischief of breaking a solemn promise to the people, and teaching them to despise the law and

grow up, in less ignorance than some other classes, it is true, but with a wholly insufficient knowledge of their own condition and liabilities. They have overcrowded the labour-market, so as to be compelled to work harder, not than other classes of labourers who earn smaller wages, but than is good for anybody to labour; and then we try to mend the matter by forbidding them to sell more than a given amount of their labour. It is not thus that the excessive competition which is the cause of the mischief can be reduced; and the true friends of the working freeman felt that he lost nothing, while he retained his liberty, by the failure of Lord Ashley's ten-hour measures of 1844.

Lord Ashley wrought in a better direction when he heartily seconded Mr Charles Buller's motion, in the session of 1843, in favour of extensive and systematic colonisation, as a means of lessening the excessive competition in the labour-market at home, and of opening new fields of subsistence and of commerce, to the mutual advantage of the colonists

and of the stayers at home. Though the discussion did not lead to any immediate practical result, it was eminently useful in directing attention to the true principles of relief, and affording large information as to our colonising prospects. We shall hereafter see what was doing in this field.

While parliament was thus almost exclusively occupied with beneficent legislation, and what was intended as such-thus indicating the peculiar pressure of the time-society out of doors was following in the same track. We see, with great satisfaction, about this time, a rising movement in favour of shortening the hours of trading in shops. Here, where exchange and not production is concerned, there can be no reasonable objection to bringing the exhausting labour of shop attendance within endurable limits. As long as the fair convenience of purchasers is considered, and the shops are kept open for the length of an average working-day, a timely closing of the shops is a benefit to the tradesman and his assistants in every way. The one thing

conduct. From this time, he drew down upon himself a burden of embarrassment and irksome responsibility, under which, after long perplexity and anguish of mind, he sank spirit-broken and terrorstricken, leaving a name which was soon to be cursed by his countrymen as fervently as it had ever been blessed. Probably, no one now supposes him to have been sincere in any expectation or desire to obtain a repeal of the union; for nothing can be more futile, or more audacious in absurdity, than his replies to Lord Charlemont and others who objected to the efficacy of repeal, and shewed that if it was obtained to-morrow, the redemption of Ireland would remain to be achieved, with less chance of unity of councils and dispassionateness of action than under the imperial connection; but he was probably of opinion that the best means of making Ireland attended to and cared for was by making her feared; and that the best way of making her feared was by pushing the repeal agitation.

In this year, we find him waging war against British manufacturers. His pantaloons, waistcoat, and coat were Irish. He considered the pleasure of giving employment to Irish hands part of the value of the price he gave for anything.' He might speak for himself; but he could not expect poorer Irishmen to indulge themselves in this sort of luxury; and the effort to exclude English manufactures failed, though O'Connell passed a law to that effect, and even attempted to enforce it, in opposition to the Dublin magistracy. Mr O'Connell made journeys, and attended dinners, for the furtherance of repeal; and in February, we find him declaring that he had been refused post-horses, through Orange intimidation; from which fact he drew the conviction, that if he had travelled on the day first fixed, his carriage would have certainly been destroyed, and himself probably murdered. In March, at a meeting on the Curragh of Kildare, he protested against a published calculation of the length of his agitation, from his age being sixty-five. 'Ten or eleven of his uncles and aunts lived to be above ninety;' and the prospect of his scope of agitation was indefinite, as he could make as much of three years as most men could of thirty.' In April, we find him holding forth on the grievous subject of rents, and proposing plans, procured from a committee of his own, for securing a tenancy of not less than twenty years for every man on the land, with power to all to purchase small farms, paying for them by instalments, with the rent. At the same date, he admitted the difficulty of enforcing his order to exclude British manufactures, and accounted for it by audaciously declaring that it was owing to an influx of English workmen, who had come over to keep down the wages of the Irish operative.' In the same month, certain American sympathisers sent over some hundreds of pounds for the furtherance of the repeal cause; and O'Connell declared that the Irish parliament was not dead-only slept-and would be awakened now by the crowing of the American cocks across the Atlantic. He took occasion to stimulate the repeal wardens to augment their funds, saying that two millions of repealersand he could not do with less than two millions

of repealers-would yield, at 18. per man, £100,000. By this time, O'Connell's 'Board of Trade' had discovered that it would be necessary to supersede the Dublin shopkeepers by 'marts for the exclusive sale of Irish commodities,' as the shopkeepers would not join in the movement to exclude British manufactures. By the middle of May it had become clear that Sir R. Peel was coming into power; and O'Connell proposed a simultaneous meeting, on a Sunday, of all the parishes of Ireland, in order to implore the queen 'not to receive into her confidence the bitter and malignant ancient enemies of her faithful Irish people.' Before this month was over, the repeal meetings in the provinces were becoming grand shows-one on the hill of Kilnoe, in Clare, consisting of 100,000 men; and another at Ardsullas, leading the way in that organisation which afterwards gave their formidable character to such meetings. The people came in companies, led by their priests, from distances of ten or fifteen miles, with temperance bands playing before them. A bedridden old woman was carried ten miles to see the preparations made for the salvation of her country.' During the absorption of the passions of the people in the growing agitation, the diminution of crime appears remarkable. While there was but one voice upon the breeze of heaven -Hurrah for repeal!'-and the shout arose from the Giants' Causeway to Cape Clear, from Connemara to the Hill of Howth'-the judges were congratulating the juries on there being few prisoners for trial, or the dock was empty.' In August, the liberator's speeches contain a curious medley; announcing his intended measure for securing to every man a long or perpetual holding of the land he lives on; desiring the people not to rebel as long as they could help it; intimating that steam-boats could bring aid from America in ten days; and longing for the hour which he declared might soon arrive, when the queen, flying from the Tory enemies of her throne, should take refuge in the arms of her faithful Irish. To these he added two curious declarations-that he had always been opposed to the introduction of a poor-law into Ireland; and that he had arranged to introduce hand-loom weaving into Ireland, trusting to achieve an exclusion of the productions of British power-looms. By this time, the repeal meetings were 'immense ;' and the priests of one diocese which contained 105 had all joined but one.

A member was now added to the association, whose accession was uproariously hailedMr O'Connell's latest grandchild, aged four days. Nothing was omitted which could amuse or gratify the people. In October, the government papers in London intimated plainly that the cabinet intended to take no notice of any nonsense in Ireland, but that any acts obviously dangerous to the general peace would be put down with the strong hand; and an appeal was made to the newspaper press on the Conservative side not to record the boasts and menaces of the repealers, as nothing but neglect seemed to be necessary to empty the benches at repeal meetings. This declaration of the Standard, in October 1841, was regarded as an indication of the policy of the new administration in regard to the