only laboring men, but all the productive classes, till the employers approach nearer and more near every year, to the condition of the employed.
The next question is, How are the people to employ their newly acquired leisure? If they resort to the alehouse to spend the evening, or to theatrical, and other places of amusement, or establishments for gambling, they will have gained but little by the change. The national system of education may do much for the rising generation, but will not affect the great body of factory operatives at present employed.
Here then is a great field for the exercise of the time and talent of the benevolent portion of the community, for the members of churches and temperance societies.
It would be presumption to suppose that the modern system of manufacturing industry, which concentrates hundreds of individuals in the same apartments, can be divested of its inevitably contingent evils and disadvantages by an act of Parliament; and that the dense manufacturing population of England can be reduced to a primitive state of simplicity and innocence of manners by a bill which leaves them in the very midst of all that is opposite and counteracting.
There are other important points connected with the ten hour factory bill—such as the commercial bearing of the question, the currency, the population, and a few others—but these I will leave to abler pens than mine, my chief object being to show the effect it will probably have on the working classes.
The bill, taken by itself, is not of so much importance as at first sight one might be led to suppose; but as a link in the great chain of improvements already introduced, and which must be introduced into the social system of England, it is of great importance.
