the kingdom. But nothing is more certainly proved than that such laws do not work. Rash people get killed, whatever their neighbours do to save them. The law might decree that every country gentleman must surround every tree in his park with a chevaux-de-frise, to prevent "all accidents" by boys climbing; but boys would climb nevertheless, and now and then one would be killed. "What would be said of the justice of throwing the spilt brain and smashed skull of the sufferer in the face of the owner of the land on which the accident happened? Yet this would be no more than Mr. Horner and Mr. Dickens have done in the case of disobedient servants who have met their deaths by going out of the way of their proper employments. As the Special Report observes—the keeper of the Zoological Gardens, whose "occasional duty" it was to feed the Cobra Capella, put it to his nose, was bitten, and died. Who calls for punishment on his employer, or believes that any special law is needed for the protection of his fellow-servants?
It appears to us that the public are under great obligations to the National Association of Factory Occupiers, for undertaking the important but difficult task of ascertaining,—first, what the law is, as between factory employers and their workers; and next, what it ought to be. The bad principle which they are exposing, and the good one which, it is to be hoped, they will insist upon, are as important to all other interests as to those of the manufacturing classes. We ourselves have selected this case, simply as the best illustration at hand of the mischief of meddling legislation, and as affording the best prospect of an effective discussion, in and out of Parliament, of the true sphere and duties of government. Our review[1] showed, in our last number, what we had to say about another form of the same mischief, in regard to a Liquor Law. Whether it is Sabbatarian or sumptuary legislation, or a case of public-house law or factory
- ↑ Westminster Review. No. XVI. Art. V.
