child; nor, indeed, did I ever see children in
ill-humour. They seemed to be always cheerful and alert; taking
pleasure in the light play of their muscles, enjoying the mobility
natural to their age. The scene of industry, so far from exciting sad
emotions, in my mind, was always exhilerating. It was delightful to
observe the nimbleness with which they pieced broken ends, as the mule
carriage began to recede from the fixed roller beam, and to see them
at leisure, after a few seconds' exercise of their tiny fingers, to
amuse themselves in any attitude they chose, till the stretch and
winding on were once more completed. The work of these lively elves
seemed to resemble a sport, in which habit gave them a pleasing
dexterity. Conscious of their skill, they were delighted to show it
off to any stranger. As to exhaustion by the day's work, they evinced
no trace of it on emerging from the mill in the evening; for they
immediately began to skip about any neighbouring playground, and to
commence their little games with the same alacrity as boys issuing
from a school."

Naturally! As though the immediate movement of every muscle were not an
urgent necessity for frames grown at once stiff and relaxed! But Ure
should have waited to see whether this momentary excitement had not
subsided after a couple of minutes. And besides, Ure could see this
whole performance only in the afternoon after five or six hours' work,
but not in the evening! As to the health of the operatives, the
bourgeois has the boundless impudence to cite the report of 1833 just
quoted in a thousand places, as testimony for the excellent health of
these people; to try to prove by detached and garbled quotations that no
trace of scrofula can be found among them, and, what is quite true, that
the factory system frees them from all acute diseases, (that they have
every variety of chronic affection instead he naturally conceals). To
explain the impudence with which our friend Ure palms off the grossest
falsehoods upon the English public, it must be known that the report
consists of three large folio volumes, which it never occurs to a well-
fed English bourgeois to study through. Let us hear further how he
expresses himself as to the Factory Act of 1834, passed by the Liberal
bourgeoisie, and imposing only the most meagre limitations upon the
manufacturers, as we shall see. This law, especially its compulsory