necessitate a third. Sir George Grey expressed to the deputation of factory occupiers in March, 1855, his regret at the lack of clearness and consistency in these circulars. One wonders whether it struck him that there must he a lack of clearness in the law or in the heads of its administrators, if the latter could not make their own requirements intelligible and consistent. The first circular was withdrawn in consequence of the representations of a deputation to Lord Palmerston in the following March. The renewal, presently after, of attempts to enforce the Inspectors' interpretation of an obscure law, showed the manufacturers that they must, if they chose to prosecute their business, organise themselves into a society,—not as Sir George Grey, and Mr. Horner, and Mr. Dickens conclude,—"to resist the law,"—but to resist unwarranted interpretations of the law, on the part of the Inspectors, and to get the law amended. At the preliminary meeting, on the 6th of March, 1855, representatives from about 750 firms were present. A committee was appointed, and a deputation organised to wait on Sir George Grey at the Home Office. At a meeting on March 22nd, the case of the mill-owners and occupiers against the Inspectors and the law was expressed in a series of Resolutions, moved and seconded by a large number of gentlemen best known throughout the kingdom, and far beyond it, for their intelligence, beneficence, public spirit, and devotedness to the cause of popular advancement, in the way of education, improved habits of living, and progress by every practicable way. These gentlemen are the employers of the factory population: that population, who, by their conduct during the years of adversity preceding the repeal of the Corn Laws, raised the hope and self-respect of the nation; showing, by their patience in suffering, their superiority to the old ignorance and prejudice, which rendered former periods of adversity seasons of outrage and fatal conflict with their employers. These were the gentlemen who had educated their people up to the needs of the time; who carried them through
