that to fence those parts of machinery that
were higher than the heads of workmen—
more than seven feet above the ground—
would be to incur an expense wholly unnecessary.
Kind-hearted interpreters of the law,
therefore, agreed with mill-owners that
seven feet of fencing should be held
sufficient. The result of this accommodation—
taking only the accounts of the last three
years—has been to credit mercy with some
pounds and shillings in the books of
English manufacturers; we cannot say how
many, but we hope they are enough to
balance the account against mercy made out
on behalf of the English factory workers
thus:—Mercy debtor to justice, of poor men,
women, and children, one hundred and six
lives, one hundred and forty-two hands or
arms, one thousand two hundred and eighty-
seven (or, in bulk, how many bushels of)
fingers, for the breaking of one thousand
three hundred and forty bones, for five
hundred and fifty-nine damaged heads,
and for eight thousand two hundred and
eighty-two miscellaneous injuries. It
remains to be settled how much cash saved
to the purses of the manufacturers is a
satisfactory and proper off-set to this
expenditure of life and limb and this crushing
of bone in the persons of their work-people.

For, be it strictly observed, this expenditure
of life is the direct result of that good-
natured determination not to carry out the
full provision of the Factory Act, but to
consider enough done if the boxing-off of
machinery be made compulsory in each room
to the height of seven feet from the floor.
Neglect as to the rest, of which we have given
the sum of a three-years' account, could lead, it
was said, only to a few accidents that would
not matter—that would really not be worth
much cost of prevention. As kings do no
wrong, so machines never stop; and what
great harm is done, if A, putting a strap on a
driving pulley, is caught by the legs and
whirled round at the rate of ninety revolutions
in a minute?—what if B, adjusting gear,
gets one arm and two thighs broken, an
elbow dislocated and a temple cracked?—what
if C, picking some cotton from the lathe
strips, should become entangled, have an arm
torn off, and be dashed up and down, now
against the floor, and now against the
ceiling?— what if D, sowing a belt, should
be dragged up by the neckerchief and
bruised by steam-power as if he were
oats?— what if the boy E, holding a belt
which the master had been sewing, be suddenly
snapped up by it, whirled round a hundred
and twenty times in a minute, and at each
revolution knocked against the ceiling till
his bones are almost reduced to powder?—
what if F, oiling a shaft, be caught first by the
neckerchief, then by the clothes, and have his
lungs broken, his arm crushed, and his body
torn?—what if G, packing yarn into a cart,
and stretching out his hand for a corner of
the cart cover blown across a horizontal
shaft, be caught up, partly dismembered, and
thrown down a corpse?—what if H, caught by
a strap, should die with a broken back-bone,
and I die crushed against a beam in the ceiling,
and little K, carrying waste tow from
one part to another, be caught up by it and
have his throat cut, and L die after one arm
had been torn off and his two feet crushed,
and M die of a fractured skull, and N die
with his left leg and right arm wrenched
from their sockets, and O, not killed, have the
hair of his head torn away, and P be scalped
and slain, and Q be beaten to death against
a joist of the ceiling, and R, coming down a
ladder, be caught by his wrapper, and bruised,
broken, and torn till he is dead, and S
have his bones all broken against a wall, and
all the rest of the alphabet be killed by boiler
explosions or destroyed in ways as horrible,
and many more men be killed than there are
letters in the alphabet to call them by? Every
case here instanced has happened, and so have
many others, in the last three years. Granted,
but what can all this matter, in the face of the
succeeding facts?—that to enclose all
horizontal shafts in mills would put the
mill-owners to great expense; that little danger is
to be apprehended from such shafts to prudent
persons, and that mill-owners have a most
anxious desire to protect the lives and limbs
of their work people. These are the facts
urged by a deputation of manufacturers that
has been deprecating any attempt to make
this anxiety more lively than it has hitherto
been.

They found such deprecation necessary.
When it became very evident that, in
addition to a large list of most serious
accidents, there were but forty lives offered up
annually to save mill-owners a little trouble
and expense, a circular was issued by the
factory-inspectors on the last day of January
in the present year, expressing their
determination to enforce the whole Factory Act
to the utmost after the first of June next,
and so to compel every shaft of machinery,
at whatever cost and of whatever kind, to be
fenced off. Thereupon London beheld a
deputation, asking mercy from the Government
for the aggrieved and threatened
manufacturers. We have, more than once, in
discussing other topics of this kind, dwelt
upon the necessity of the most strict repression
of all misplaced tenderness like that for
which, this committee seems to have
petitioned. Preventable accidents must be sternly
prevented.

Let Justice wake, and Rigour take her time,
For, lo! our mercy is become our crime."

The result of the deputation is not wholly
satisfactory. There follows so much interference
by the Home Office in favour of the mill-
owners, as to absolve them from the necessity
of absolutely boxing-up all their machines, and