hooks, if applied, would increase, instead of diminishing, the danger.
We need not go any further with our citations. We have shown that the opinion of Lord Palmerston's instigators is met by that of several well-qualified persons. It is no business of ours to decide which opinion is the right one, or the most likely to be the right one. Our business is simply to show that Mr. Horner's representations of the temper and conduct of the millowners, in his Reports and elsewhere, are not justified by the facts. He has repeatedly declared that life or limb has been lost in the mill of A. B. or C., because the millowner would not save either by the expenditure of half-a-crown in hooks, or a few shillings in casing. It may be thought needless to rebuke such misrepresentations on the part of any one who knows so little of human nature as to suppose that the most selfish of capitalists would subject himself to the annoyance and public inquiry, and certain expense,—to say nothing of the anguish of mind,—of having an operative killed or maimed in his mill, for the sake of any number of shillings. In his Report of October, 1854, including seven months from Lord Palmerston's recommendation of rectangular hooks, Mr. Horner says (p.5): "Very little attention has been paid to the recommendations of your Lordship:" and yet this fact does not awaken in him any misgiving as to the value of his lordship's suggestions. He assumes throughout that life and limb might be saved by the expenditure of a few shillings, while yet his own testimony of various dates might have shown him, as it has shown everybody else, that his habit of thought and expression is too loose to entitle him to any reliance. In the first place, we find him, in the first circular, insisting upon the fencing of all shafts in a way which certainly induced Lord Palmerston, as well as the millowners, to suppose that he contemplated permanent casings of wood or iron. In the next place, he is found protesting that he was misunderstood; that he did not presume to prescribe any particular
