NOTES.

Note A., page 135.-MR. SADLER'S BILL.

THE object of the bill is to abolish a system of infant slavery, destructive of the health, the morals, the comforts of the children of the poor, and to interpose the protecting power of the law between. an oppressive cupidity and its helpless victims. The object of the bill is consequently not more consistent with the dictates of benevolence than the duties of sound policy; for whatever deteriorates any portion of the people, physically and morally, is so far an injury to the state, a national nuisance, and ought to be abated.

Address by Mr. Whitehead, of Holmfrith, delivered at a Public Meeting at Halifax, on the 6th instant." I am a clothier, and live in the midst of a large manufacturing district. I have been in factories hundreds of times within the last sixteen or seventeen years, and I have never remained there more than three or four hours without hearing some of the little ones cry as if their hearts would break. I have seen severe punishments inflicted; but the great curse of the system is excessive toil. Let children once enter the mill, and neither their tender years, delicate limbs, nor good behaviour can protect them against extreme labour. The general rule with adults and mechanics is to work twelve hours, deducting two for meals; but these children have no power to limit their time, so that there is no security for their health and comfort without a legislative enactment. I have been in woollen mills in the winter season, when all were at labour hours after the peasant had returned from work, to enjoy the comforts of his fireside; but here the children were confined amidst the smoke, stench, and unwholesome lights of the factory, and compelled to be as active with their little hands as if it has been noon; and often have I seen the gas that has escaped

mingled with dust from the wool in the machinery, so corrupt the atmosphere, as to render it impossible for any human being to breathe it with impunity.

“The children are frequently reduced to such insensibility as not to know when they have finished their cardings, but their hands and feet have continued to perform the evolutions of their work. Many times in the evening, as I have passed on from child to child, in a woollen mill, each has turned up its little face, and anxiously enquired, What's o'clock?' I have answered Seven.' 'Seven, was the rejoinder, 'why, then it's three hours to ten, is it not? We maun't gi' up till ten, and past.' This, delivered in a melancholy tone, has made me thus reflect as I have returned home. I know you must remain at work till past ten; I also know that you are called out of bed at five in the morning; and although it may be eleven at night when you reach home, you must again leave your beds at five, and this, too, every morning in the year, Sundays excepted. Many of you will have to grope about in the dark for the greasy rags which scarcely cover you. No matter; you must face all weathers; though the roads be choaked with snow, and the frost to make the strongest shiver. Let the winds roar, or the rain fall, still there must be no delay. At five, every morning, you must leave your humble homes, and, lamentable to reflect, Ye maun't gi' up till ten, and past!'

"Is it right that children should be treated thus; that such slavery should exist in England? Is it right, that while the means of education are multiplying throughout the land, these hard-worked infants should be debarred from them, and deprived of the opportunity of acquiring that knowledge which maketh wise unto salvation, and this, too, in a country professing a religion which sheds, with peculiar benignity, its blessings on the young, and whose Divine Founder has said, 'Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not.' May the legislature be alive to the appeal which will be made to it this night, in behalf of the sacred interests of religion, justice, and humanity."

Note B.-page 142.

"The late reported insurrrection in Jamaica appears to have been fabricated by the planters, in order to distract the public attention, and to weaken the few sparks of parliamentary interest which may be felt in the cause of humanity. The facts are said to be simply these: The poor oppressed slaves, tenacious of their scanty privileges, have been accustomed, time immemorial, to have three days recreation at Christmas, of one of which their taskmasters were determined to rob them, in consequence of Christmas-day, in 1831, falling out on the first day (Sunday), and expected them to re-enter on their daily toil on the third, instead of the fourth day. The poor sufferers, however, ran away, to what is called "The Bush," their place of shelter. The military was immediately sent in pursuit of them, and, by their summary means of destruction, killed two thousand of our sable brethren! One white man only fell a victim to this disgraceful exhibition of wanton cruelty in professing Christians."

Oh sad, that the cause of justice, mercy, truth, and humanity has so few to advocate it in what is called the religious world, whose attention and energy is engrossed by, and exhales in, zeal for the defence of party opinion. Oh how dishonouring to Christ, that disinterested benevolence beyond the limit which party exclusiveness prescribes, should be left to the merely kind and humane feelings of unregenerate human nature. What are we to expect from the followers of Christ? Whatever is noble, and disinterested, and virtuous. They are not as Jesuits to permit expediency to dictate, or to suffer the fear of offending the prejudice of this or the other party to paralize their faculties, and shut their mouth when God not only requires of them to plead in behalf of those who have no helper, but even gives them arguments which none are able to gainsay nor resist. Those "who are not permitted to vindicate their own rights," are a portion of the dumb in whose behalf-and as having a name to live, they ought to plead.

1

The influence of wonian is confessedly great, either in actuating to what is evil or good. The adversary of Righteousness has often found them ready tools for the deterioration of man and society at large, and shall not the LORD find also a free-will offering in His service, and in the service of humanity, of that influence in those whose understandings and affections have been humanized and exalted by some knowledge of His character, and communion with His revealed mind?

It is against the order and appointment of Divine Wisdom that women should lift up, and cause their voice to be heard in the streets; they are called to shed around the benignant influences which a drawing up into the Sun of Righteousness produces in that silent beneficence, which, like the dew, is acknowledged in its blessed effects.

Profession, without actual fidelity in the service of God, is a drawing near Him with the lips, in the absence of that chief thing which He desires, the affection of the heart.

In admitting your claim to the term evangelical, you assume a high rank of responsibility. In assembling in each other's houses with the design of enquiring reverently at His Living Oracles to know His revealed mind, you incur a tremendous condemnation if you do not act on the knowledge which you thus seek to gain. Let the spirit of devotion to the will of God, of which this readiness to learn it should be the proof, not evaporate in "ever learning and never being able to come to the knowledge of the Truth." but out of an honest and upright desire produce the fruits of Righteousness.

Among these use all the influence which your long tried fidelity in all the relations of life has earned for you, in turning your fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons from the blinding and perverting influence of Mammon, by pointing out to them the despicable abominations which are gilded by the deceptive illusions of political and self-interest.

Bring the detestable legalizing of Asiatic idolatry (because of its shameful gains) before them, and bid them look at the curse whose

kanker has corroded the vitals of our constitution. Bid them look back to the proud vaunt of our ocean security against invasion, and say whether it has not, as if in mockery of our vain-glorious boast, conveyed from our Asiatic territory that invader, who now stalks with mortal blight throughout the length and breadth of our island, alike confounding all science and all argument. Bid them also look at that, for which they have thus long shut their ear against the cry of the hundreds of thousands of our sable brethren, and declare whether these blood-stained millions have not been "the accursed thing" which is now crumbling into rottenness our institutions, intoxicating and convulsing every department of society. Bid them recal to mind their "honest engagement," or "perjury" in taking that oath which introduced them to their places of influence in their nation's council, and remember that the written Word of God, by which they shall either be condemned or acquitted, shall not return void, but be glorified in the "pulling down" of whatever is contrary to righteousness-in "rooting up" whatever is not founded on His authority-and in reducing into its own standard, and resolving into its own elements, whatever is done in opposition to that, whose authority, let it be again noted, they either uprightly or dishonestly recognize.

To retrieve a sinner from the error of his way will be an everlasting cause of joy to you; while, instead of a curse blighting, infatuating, and maddening their counsels, a blessing will hallow their equitable and righteous administrations.

The same laws that protect you and those dear to you, may be doing so at the expense of justice and mercy to others.

This being a great grace and privilege, involving a high degree of responsibility on your part as a rational and accountable agent, you are to exert the faculties which your situation cultivates and calls forth in behalf of those whom rapacity has placed without the pale of justice.

You must not, because you are not a religious professor, pass by on the other side in the hope that the Priest and the Pharisee will take it up; you may, by giving a practical demonstration of your