recommendation was read at the meeting* in these
distinct terms: "The deputation are of opinion,
that a fund of not less than five thousand
pounds should be immediately raised; and
they suggest that all cases of prosecution
which the committee of management are of
opinion can be legitimately dealt with by the
Association, shall be defended by, and the
penalties or damages paid out of, the funds of
the Association." Whereupon it was moved,
seconded, and unanimously resolved:

*Reported in the Manchester Guardian of March 28, 1855.

''That the recommendation in the report, to raise
immediately a sum of not less than £5,000 be
immediately carried into execution, and that an additional
contribution of one shilling per nominal horse-power
from each mill-occupier (making a total of two
shillings) be at once called for, to enable the committee to
carry out the recommendation to defend, at the cost of
the Association, all cases of prosecution which they
may consider fairly to come within the sphere of the
Association."

We have only to add, that the report
including these resolutions, besides receiving a
wide notoriety through the newspapers, was
printed and circulated by the Association
itself, and that a copy of it was obtained by us
before we wrote upon the subject. There can
be no doubt, then, under what impressions the
first members of the Asociation joined it, and
of the accusation under which it justly lay
until it thought best publicly to withdraw
from a dangerous position.

On this same point, Miss Martineau is of
opinion that "Mr. Dickens had better
consider, for the sake of his own peace of
mind, as well as the good of his neighbours,
how to qualify himself for his enterprise
before he takes up his next task of
reform. If he must give the first place to his
idealism and sensibilities, let him confine
himself to fiction; and if he will put himself
forward as a social reformer, let him do the
only honest thing,—study both sides of the
question he takes up. How far he is from
having done this in the present case, a short,
but not unimportant statement may show.
He says, by his own pen, or his contributor's
[let us say, then, his contributor's]
'But the factory inspectors will proceed for
penalties? Certainly they will; and then, if
these gentlemen be members of the National
Association of Factory Occupiers, they will
have their case defended for them and their
fine immediately paid.' Yet while the writer
declares his information to be drawn from
the papers of the Association, he ignores the
following conspicuous passages from their First
Report"—the retractation then being quoted.

Now, setting aside the likelihood or
unlikelihood of Mr. Dickens, to secure his peace
of mind, taking ghostly advice from Miss
Martineau, there is no doubt that in the said
First Report the retractation was conspicuous,
and that moreover, it was meant to be
conspicuous; but we can hardly think it so
conspicuous as to have been visible, not merely
before it was visible, but, as we firmly believe,
even before it was so much as conceived.
On the same line with the page 605 of
this journal, upon which we are lectured, are
inscribed the words "Household Words,
July 28, 1855." The number dated on that
day was, in the usual manner, published three
days previously, and issued in Manchester on
the twenty-sixth of July, but the report which
we failed to do the honest thing by citing was
not written—as we find by the date against
the chairman's signature—until the seventh of
August! When it reached us in September
we at once (in our two hundred and eighty-
fifth number) made public its purport; but we
did not say what we may now say, namely, that
there came with it a remark which we believe
to be true, and which dates certainly go far
to justify: that the Special Report—a thing not
contemplated in the rules—was actually
suggested by our comments,—that our journal,
containing a wide publication of the illegal
position of the recusant mill-owners, having
reached Manchester on the twenty-sixth of
July, was considered by the committee of the
Association to necessitate retreat to safer
ground by means of a Special Report, and that
by the seventh of August, the report was
completed and signed; after which, it has been
further suggested to us, that July was put upon
the cover, not without a hope that somebody
might be misled into believing that it had
really been produced several weeks sooner
than it was. Be that as it may, we should
not have supposed that the Association, for
the sake of passing a so easily detected deception
on the public, would have imperilled the
reputation of an honourable lady by leaving
uncorrected in her pamphlet a flagrant error,
of which it could by no conceivable chance
have been ignorant, and by suffering it to
go forth, headed in small capitals, MIS-
STATEMENTS IN HOUSEHOLD WORDS.

We turn with sorrow to the other contents
of the pamphlet. As the pamphlet of the
Association we are bound to show why it
can only damage the cause of the Association
with the government and with the public;
we would have wholly spared the writer our
present exposure of her mistake, if we could.

The pamphlet begins with some calm wise
words about the war, by which the reader is
prepared to expect a very different treatment
of the immediate topic in hand than that
which it is destined to receive. No sooner is
the subject touched than the false keynote is
struck, and of all persons in the world, it is
Miss Martineau whom we find echoing the
exaggerated lamentations of an injured
interest. "The issue," we are told, "to which
the controversy is now brought, is that of the
supersession of either the textile
manufactures, or the existing factory law. The
two cannot longer co-exist." This is one of
those remarkable predictions of which we are
beginning, by a very long national experience,