system.
The opponents of such legislation, on the other hand, declared that
their statements were exaggerated or untrue, and that the condition of
the factory laborer was not worse than that of other workingmen, or
harder than that of the domestic worker and his family had been in
earlier times.

But apart from these recriminations and contradictions, there were
certain general arguments used in the debates which can be grouped
into three classes on each side. For the regulating laws there was in
the first place the purely sentimental argument, repulsion against the
hard, unrelieved labor, the abuse, the lack of opportunity for
enjoyment or recreation of the children of the factory districts; the
feeling that in wealthy, humane, Christian England, it was unendurable
that women and little children should work longer hours, be condemned
to greater hardships, and more completely cut off from the enjoyments
of life than were the slaves of tropical countries. This is the
argument of Mrs. Browning's _Cry of the Children_:--

"Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?
They are leaning their young heads against their mothers.
And that cannot stop their tears.
The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west;
But the young, young children, O my brothers!
They are weeping bitterly.
They are weeping in the play-time of the others
In the country of the free.

* * * * *

'For oh!' say the children, 'we are weary,
And we cannot run or leap:
If we cared for any meadows, it were merely
To drop down in them and sleep.'

* * * * *

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their look is dread to see,
For they mind you of their angels in high places,
With eyes turned on Deity.
'How long,' they say, 'how long, O cruel nation,
Will you stand, to move the world on a child's heart
Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation
And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?'"

Secondly, it was argued that the long hours for the children cut them
off from all intellectual and moral training, that they were in no
condition after such protracted labor to profit by any opportunities
of education that should be supplied, tha