ustain the labours of maturer years. Where is the
spinning-wheel now, and every simple and insulated occupation of the
industrious cottager? Wherever this boasted machinery is established,
the children of the poor are death-doomed from their cradles. Look for
one moment at midnight into a cotton-mill, amidst the smell of oil,
the smoke of lamps, the rattling of wheels, the dizzy and complicated
motions of diabolical mechanism: contemplate the little human machines
that keep play with the revolutions of the iron work, robbed at that
hour of their natural rest, as of air and exercise by day: observe
their pale and ghastly features, more ghastly in that baleful and
malignant light, and tell me if you do not fancy yourself on the
threshold of Virgil's hell, where

Continuo auditae voces, vagitus et ingens,
_Infantumque animae flentes_, in limine primo,
Quos _dulcis vitae exsortes_, et ab ubere raptos,
_Abstulit atra dies_, et FUNERE MERSIT ACERBO!

As Mr Escot said this, a little rosy-cheeked girl, with a basket of
heath on her head, came tripping down the side of one of the rocks on
the left. The force of contrast struck even on the phlegmatic spirit
of Mr Jenkison, and he almost inclined for a moment to the doctrine of
deterioration. Mr Escot continued:

_Mr Escot._
Nor is the lot of the parents more enviable. Sedentary victims of
unhealthy toil, they have neither the corporeal energy of the savage,
nor the mental acquisitions of the civilised man. Mind, indeed, they
have none, and scarcely animal life. They are mere automata, component
parts of the enormous machines which administer to the pampered
appetites of the few, who consider themselves the most valuable
portion of a state, because they consume in indolence the fruits of
the earth, and contribute nothing to the benefit of the community.

_Mr Jenkison._
That these are evils cannot be denied; but they have their
counterbalancing advantages. That a man should pass the day in a
furnace and the night in a cellar, is bad for the individual, but good
for others who enjoy the benefit of his labour.

_Mr Escot._
By what right do they so?

_Mr Jenkison._
By the right of all property and all possession: _le droit du plus
fort_.

_Mr Escot._
Do you justify that principle?

_Mr Jenkison._
I neither justify nor condemn it. It is practically recognised in all
societies; and, though it is certainly the source of enormous evil