ssenters; for,
although compulsory religious instruction was not extended to the
children of dissenters, the schools provided for were to be placed under
the general supervision of the Established Church, and the Bible made the
general reading-book; religion being thus made the foundation of all
instruction, whence the dissenters felt themselves threatened. The
manufacturers and the Liberals generally united with them, the working-
men were divided by the Church question, and therefore inactive. The
opponents of the bill, though outweighed in the great manufacturing
towns, such as Salford and Stockport, and able in others, such as
Manchester, to attack certain of its points only, for fear of the working-
men, collected nevertheless nearly two million signatures for a petition
against it, and Graham allowed himself to be so far intimidated as to
withdraw the whole bill. The next year he omitted the school clauses,
and proposed that, instead of the previous provisions, children between
eight and thirteen years should be restricted to six and one-half hours,
and so employed as to have either the whole morning or the whole
afternoon free; that young people between thirteen and eighteen years,
and all females, should be limited to twelve hours; and that the hitherto
frequent evasions of the law should be prevented. Hardly had he proposed
this bill, when the ten hours' agitation was begun again more vigorously
than ever. Oastler had just then regained his liberty; a number of his
friends and a collection among the workers had paid his debt, and he
threw himself into the movement with all his might. The defenders of the
Ten Hours' Bill in the House of Commons had increased in numbers, the
masses of petitions supporting it which poured in from all sides brought
them allies, and on March 19th, 1844, Lord Ashley carried, with a
majority of 179 to 170, a resolution that the word "Night" in the Factory
Act should express the time from six at night to six in the morning,
whereby the prohibition of night-work came to mean the limitation of
working-hours to twelve, including free hours, or ten hours of actual
work a day. But the ministry did not agree to this. Sir James Graham
began to threaten resignation from the Cabinet, and at the next vote on
the bill the House rejected by a small majority both ten and twelve
hours! Graham and Peel now announced that they should introduce a new
bill, and that if this failed to pass they sh