of a cart, because a cloth in it is accidentally
blown by the wind against machinery.

Need we do more than allude to such
arguments as, that if law compels the
fencing of machinery (which while in motion
thus can seize the passive stander-by) it
ought to compel windows to be barred,
because people can throw themselves out
of them, and trees to be fenced, because
boys can climb up and tumble down? If we
take thought for the operative, working in the
midst of dangerous machinery, are we, it is
asked, to legislate "for every drunken
vagabond who lies down in the track—every deaf
old man who chooses the railway for his
walk!" Need we answer such preposterous
inquiries?

We have maintained that it is strictly within
the province of the law to protect life, and to
prohibit any arrangements by which it is
shown that the lives of people in pursuit of
their lawful and useful work, are without
necessity endangered. Preventable accidents
of every kind we have always declared it to
be the duty of the legislature to prevent. We
are told that Common Law suffices for all
cases. It is hardly worth while to spend time
in showing that it does not, and cannot provide
for these cases. Common Law is the law as
established for a given and considerable length
of time, and it arose out of the fusion of much
special legislation. It knew nothing of steam-
engines, and it is impossible that it should
have foreseen such cases as arise out of the
new systems of railway and factory. Common
Law will not make factories safe working
places for the operative; special consideration
must be given to the subject. When
we learn, as Sir John Kincaid reports from
Scotland, that a sufficient fencing of three
hundred and fifty feet of horizontal shafting
cost one factory only six pounds; that the
casing of two hundred and fifty-one feet of
shafting above seven feet from the floor—
more precaution than was absolutely needed
—cost another factory only eight pounds four;
that a Paisley factory cased three hundred
and twenty-four feet of such shafting most
efficiently with block iron casing, for no more
than sixteen pounds four, we refuse to
listen to the cry of Mills on Fire—Ruinous
Expense—Manufactures must cease—Fatal
Principles—Property going to be pitched into
the Atlantic—and simply wait until the
recusant Lancashire Mill-owners have done calling
names and litigating, and have learnt that
if they will not voluntarily take the necessary
steps to prevent the more horrible sort of
accidents in their mills, they must take them
by compulsion.

Miss Martineau suggests the
impropriety of any discussion until doubt has
been removed by the settlement of a point
raised before the Court of Queen's Bench.
The whole matter is to remain in abeyance—
things are to go on as they are, and there are
to be no convictions—while the point mainly
at issue is awaiting the decision of the
higher courts. Let us see what this means.
The point at issue, as the pamphlet rightly
states, is the interpretation of the words
"securely fenced;" and it was agreed some
time ago that in the case of a certain
prosecution for unfenced machinery, the question
should go before the Queen's Bench to determine
whether machinery could be said to
be otherwise than securely fenced when no
accident could be shown to have been
caused by it; whether the fact that such
machinery had led to deaths and mutilations
in other mills proved it, or did not
prove it, to be insecure in a mill where,
as yet, no blood had been shed. The question
so raised is an obvious quibble, and even
the known uncertainty of the law could
scarcely throw a doubt over the issue of a
reference to its supreme courts. Meanwhile
the issue was raised. The great purpose and
business of the Association seemed to be to
raise it. One, at least, of the inspectors stood
aside from the disputed class of prosecutions
till the doubt so raised should be definitively
settled. We ourselves now fall under reproof
for not solemnly and silently awaiting the
decision of the question, whether securely
fenced means so fenced as that an accident
shall not have happened, or so fenced that an
accident shall not arise. We now learn upon
inquiry, that while we have been waiting,
and the Association has been claiming a
twice-pending judicial decision, we find—
what do our readers suppose?—that no
case whatever awaits the opinion of the
Judges!

We believe that we have now answered all
the accusations laid against ourselves in Miss
Martineau's pamphlet. There is one citation of
"actual resolutions of the Association," side
by side with our summary of their purport,
presented as a "conviction of the humanity-
monger," of which we need say nothing,
because it cannot fail to suggest to any person
only moderately prejudiced, that our summary
is very close and accurate indeed.

We will pursue the pamphlet no further,
having set ourselves right. There is not
an argument, or statement, or allusion in
it that is not open to rebuke. It fails
even in such small details as when a
professor of Literature with a becoming sense of
its uses, and that Professor the authoress of
Forest and Game Law Tales, and of many
volumes of Stories on Political Economy, should
gracefully and becomingly think it as against
Mr. Dickens, "pity, as a matter of taste, that a
writer of fiction should choose topics in which
political philosophy and morality were
involved." It fails when accusing us of "burlesque"
and "irony," because we put plain things
"in the palpable way which a just-minded writer
would scrupulously avoid," and have, God
knows, with a heart how full of earnestness,
tried to make the suffering perceived that must
have been involved in all these accidents. It