to this in Northumberland?"—Sydney Smith's Letters, p. 529, to the Countess Grey.
It appears at times that parliament, as well as the public, has a glimmering sense of the vices and mischiefs of meddling legislation. While oppressing the Factory Occupiers by a system of inquisitorial annoyance, and a new sort of constable in the person of Mr. Horner, who carries the true one-sided temper of the informer into his office, parliament will not hear of introducing the same law and method into other industrial departments, where the injuries to life and limb exceed those in factories. At the close of the last session, a Committee of the House of Commons rejected, by a majority of 125 to 3, a clause which should give to Inspectors of Mines and Collieries powers of prosecution similar to those of the Factory Inspectors. While every factory worker who is prevented from coming to work at nine next morning, by any kind of injury,—whether by a cut, or a bruise of thumb or forefinger (used in the spinning process), or a kick or fall in the play-ground, or any hurt however slight,—is to be reported upon as gravely and precisely as if he had lost head or limb, the Parliamentary Committee rejected, by a majority of 108 to 10, a less stringent provision of the Mines and Collieries Bill. What parliament has to do is to extend equal justice, not by carrying mischievous legal interference into quarries, mines, railways, Sheffield shops, with their fearful circular saws and heavy rollers, or Birmingham foundries, with their molten metal; but to relieve the textile manufactures of the country from the interference which a partial and passionate Inspector may convert into an intolerable legal persecution. When our readers learn that the Inspectors of three out of four districts have laid informations against milloccupiers, from 1836 to 1851 inclusive, to the number of 935; while Mr. Horner has laid, in the same time, 2,761, in his one district, it will be no surprise to them to learn that one of the Resolutions of the Committee of Management of Factory Occupiers, meeting
