448 PROSPECTS OF INDUSTRY 



become, as is too frequently the case, demoralised and reckless, to 

 render perfect the portraiture of savage life." 



This picture is doubtless overdrawn, but we have reason to be- 

 lieve, that in so far as town Hand-Loom Weavers are concerned, it 

 is founded in truth. The bulk of this class of labourers is however 

 scattered in the neighbourhoods of the manufacturing towns; and 

 notwithstanding the extreme depression in their wages, and their 

 consequent abject poverty, a more orderly, sober, and patient set of 

 men does not exist. It is a gross calumny to brand them as idlers 

 and thieves, who cling to their occupation solely because it enables 

 them to be idlers and thieves, and who refuse to become factory- 

 workers, because that then they must be industrious and punctual. 

 A more unfounded or a more cruel judgment was never pronounced 

 in the darkest ages of religious bigotry and intolerance ; a judgment 

 passed because they are excluded from the pale of the steam-engine ; 

 excluded not voluntarily, but because there is no chance of their 

 changing their industrial condition. 



What, it may be urged, can thus have led a man to stigmatise a 

 quarter of a million of his countrymen as thieves and idlers ? It is 

 impossible to answer the question, and we therefore leave Mr. Baines 

 to make his own amende. 



The condition of the Hand-Loom Weavers is the index to point 

 out to us the influence of Machinery. It has already reduced a vast 

 body of men from a state of comparative independence to the lowest 

 abyss of social misery, an abyss from which there does not exist the 

 most remote probability that they will ever be able to extricate 

 themselves; on the contrary, the constant application of mechanical 

 contrivances is daily adding to their numbers, by forcing away hands 

 from the mills, and (proh pudor /) by the Poor- Law Commissioners 

 endeavouring to translate a pauperised agricultural population 

 amongst them, without the slightest chance of its procuring regular 

 employment. It can only swell the amount of misery, and accelerate 

 that social crisis which the steam-engine is generating provided 

 wise measures are not taken to avert it, of which we grieve to say, 

 that we see little hope, judging from the Factory Bill of last session. 

 As a curious illustration of the imperfect legislation resulting from 

 want of information, and from commissions of inquiry, we may 

 mention, that the Factory question, which excited so much attention, 



