LAW IN POLITICS. 387 



supply of fuel. With this change came the aban- 

 donment of the system of Apprenticeship. It was 

 now "free" labour which more and more sup- 

 plied the mills. But this only led to the same 

 evils in an aggravated form. Children and 

 women were especially valuable in the work of 

 mills. There were parts of the machinery which 

 might be fed by almost infant " hands." The 

 earnings of children became an irresistible temp- 

 tation to the parents. They were sent to the 

 Factory at the earliest age, and they worked dur- 

 ing the whole hours that the machinery was kept 

 at work. The result of this system was soon appar- 

 ent. In 18 1 5, thirteen years after he had obtained 

 the Act of 1802, Sir Robert Peel came back to 

 Parliament and told them that the former Act 

 had become useless — that mills were now generally 

 worked not by water, but by steam — that Ap- 

 prentices had been given up, but that the same 

 exhausting and demoralising labour, from which 

 Parliament had intended to relieve Apprentices, 

 was the lot of thousands and thousands of the 

 children of the free poor. In the following year, 

 1 8 16, pressing upon the House of Commons a new 



