number and seriousness of the accidents in
factories, taken alone, but at their per-centage
on the whole population of the factory
operatives in this country. He began by
attributing to "wilful blindness or ingenious
perversity," the constant omission to state the
number of people among whom factory
accidents occurred. He proceeded to state that
number, upon the authority of the very
people whom—unless he meant ourselves—he
was accusing of suppression. "The last
report," he believed, "which was made by the
factory inspectors, was about four years ago ;
and at that time there were about six hundred
thousand people employed in the inspected
factories." Very well. Since that time, every
report in which the inspectors number
accidents, contains also a careful numbering of
the new mills opened, of the old mills
enlarged, or become unoccupied, and of the
increase of horse-power in every district.
There is no concealment, therefore, through
wilful blindness or ingenious perversity, of
the extent of the factory system, on the part
of the gentlemen whose reports suggest to
the Home Office and to the public those
conclusions against which the chairman was
protesting.

As for ourselves, we admit freely that it
never did occur to us that it was possible to
justify, by arithmetic, a thing unjustifiable
by any code of morals, civilised or savage.
By land and sea, thousands of our countrymen
are killed or maimed every year, in
consequence of accidents that are distinctly
preventible. Every such accident lies at the
door of the man by whose neglect or indifference
it is permitted to occur ; and every such
man ought to be made, by society, to feel, in
a substantial way, the seriousness of the
responsibility he has incurred. This opinion
we have expressed frequently and strongly,
and not by any means with exclusive
reference to cotton-manufacturers. We have
urged it with reference to ships, with
reference to house-building, with reference toto sewerage, with reference to town churchyards,
with reference to sundry trades, with
reference to railways, mines, and quarries,
as well as with reference to factories ; and
we have not forgotten that there are some
sources of preventible accident to be discussed
more fully than heretofore, each in its own
convenient season.

It happens that no season can be so convenient
as the present for directing the attention
of the public to that class of preventible
accidents which is attached to labour in the
factories ; simply because, at this time, means
are being used for their prevention, and a
powerful interest combines for the purpose
of producing deputations, aggregate meetings,
and associations, to frustrate the hope of the
public that such means will be effectual.
Having explained so much, and added our
private belief, that if there occurred annually
throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland,
among twenty or thirty millions of people,
only one accident preventible by law, it would
be, nevertheless, the business of the law to
prevent it, we will go on to the arithmetical
demonstration of the right of bruising,
tearing, maiming, battering or crushing, four
thousand operatives per annum, which should
be vested in an interest employing a total of
seven hundred thousand persons. This is, in
fact, the Manchester chairman's requirement ;
we hope we are not totally blind,
but, that it is an argument on that
gentleman's part, we confess we cannot see. If
it be an argument for anything, it is an
argument in addition to all that have hitherto
urged upon the government a strict
upholding of the factory-law. We will not
call it inhumanity—it is not that—but it is
surely a strange illustration of the power of
self-interest and habit, that a gentleman of
high character, who well deserves all the
respect attaching to his name, could think a
point of this kind settled by the calculation,
that four thousand accidents, great and small,
yield only one to every hundred and seventy-five
persons, and that the number of horrible
deaths caused yearly being only forty-two—
seven hundred thousand, divided by forty-two,
gave a product of sixteen thousand and
sixty-six, or, in round numbers, one in
seventeen thousand.

What if you were to carry out this method
of arguing by products ? There is a kind of
death which the law seeks to prevent,
although it is scarcely found to be preventible,
and that is, death by wilful murder.
Perhaps there may be about forty-two who
suffer death in that way, annually, throughout
Great Britain ; and the population of the
whole country is immensely greater than the
population of the factory-world contained
within it. Perhaps, also, there may occur in
the year four thousand burglaries of greater or
less moment, or some other number which
would go certainly oftener than a hundred
and seventy-five times into the whole population.
Why, then, let it be asked, are honest
men to be taxed for the maintenance of
expensive systems of law and police when the
per centage of burglary and murder, upon the
sum total of men who are neither murderers
nor burglars, is represented only by such a
ridiculous fraction as may be received at an
aggregate meeting like the Manchester chairman's
with laughter and applause. He spoke
of a third of a man per cent. Burglary and
murder put together, do not touch a third of a
a man per cent, or anything approaching to
it. What right then has the home government
to concern itself about such trifles as
burglary and murder ? This is the sort of
argument to which we are reduced when the
moral element is exchanged for the
arithmetical.

Besides, what, may be said, arithmetically
considered, is a murder or a robbery ? A
man, aged thirty, is guilty—if he can be