452 Report of Ike Society fur superseding [MAY, 



Evident that either such a law must be evaded., or very serious inconve- 

 niences, and often very fatal dangers, would result from its enforcement. 

 But none of the circumstances supply an answer to any measure short of 

 the prohibition of the practice : they form no bar to the proposal for 

 getting rid of it in the most extended possible degree ; or of amending, 

 by regulation, the condition of the comparatively small number of chil- 

 dren who must continue to be employed in it. 



Now, we have little doubt that, by competent regulation, the employ- 

 ment of climbing boys might be diminished to at most one-tenth of its 

 existing amount. The cases in which their work is absolutely required 

 are very few, indeed. The process of " coring" chimnies is a work 

 performed only once at the time when the chimney is originally built. 

 The necessity for examination after the accident of fire, or for possible 

 want of repairs, occurs but seldom. And the number of chimnies which 

 must of necessity be cleansed by boys, bears no nameable proportion to 

 that of those in which a well constructed machine most fully and com- 

 pletely answers all the purpose. The Committee state, in their pamphlet 

 before us, that by a new machine, invented and used under their patron- 

 age, in the last year, " out of 836 chimnies attempted, there were only 

 thirteen in which the operation did not entirely succeed." Now, taking 

 the actual or partial failures to have been treble this amount, it would 

 still appear that nineteen chimnies out of twenty have been perfectly well 

 cleansed by the machine. And, moreover, it should be recollected that, 

 where chimnies cannot be swept by machinery, the fact arises entirely 

 from the peculiarity of their formation : a formation, which, if the 

 employment of boys were expensive or inconvenient, would as certainly 

 be avoided by future architects, as many other circumstances of annoy- 

 ance remaining in old houses are uniformly got rid of now in those more 

 recently and conveniently built. As far as necessity goes, therefore, 

 there seems reason to believe that at least three-fourths of the present 

 quantity of work now performed by climbing-boys might be got rid of 

 at once : and that, within fifty years, by a very easy and inexpensive 

 attention to building arrangements, their employment might be almost 

 entirely restricted to cases of accident or repair. 



Unfortunately, however, as it appears to us, the very praiseworthy and 

 zealous advocates of the improved system, having failed to carry their 

 whole object by legislative interference, rather hastily abandoned the 

 chance we should almost say the moral certainty of carrying by far 

 the greater portion of it. This is wrong, both with reference to prin- 

 ciple and to experience. It scarcely ever happens that any system of 

 evil can be got rid of at a single blow. Human arrangements depend 

 so much indeed are constructed so much one upon another, that 

 we can scarcely touch any long constituted system, without collaterally 

 affecting and shaking half-a-dozen more. It is painful and very pro- 

 voking to have to do good by degrees ; but it is by degrees that it must 

 be done in nine cases of every kind in ten; and especially in matters of 

 legislation. On the other hand, there is a mistake in believing, that, 

 without legislation, we can ever upon any subject do much. Private 

 exertion or recommendation effects very little in moving men out of the 

 ordinary course of their interest, or of that which they fancy to be 

 their interest : and such engines are still less efficient where they have 

 to contend with old habits and prejudices. The people, in the mass, 

 have been used to have their chimnies swept by children ; and that 

 which they have been accustomed to although it were for no reason 



