s, in the increased roll of criminal
commitments, and the number of young persons of both sexes, who,
loosened by these protracted periods of idleness, never afterwards
regain habits of regularity and industry. Nor is the evil lessened by
the blind infatuation with which it is uniformly regarded by the
other classes of the community, and the obstinate resistance they
make to all measures calculated to arrest the violence of these
combinations, in consequence of the expense with which they would
probably be attended--a supineness which, by leaving the coast
constantly clear to the terrors of such associations, and promising
impunity to their crimes, operates as a continual bounty on their
recurrence.

[Footnote 7:

Commitments:--
Lanarkshire. Lancashire. Staffordshire. Yorkshire.
1836 451 2,265 686 1,252
1837[8] 565 2,809 909 1,376
1841 513 3,987 1,059 1,895
1842[9] 696 4,497 1,485 2,598

PORTER'S _Parl. Tables_, xi. 162.--_Parl. Paper of Crime_,
1843, p. 53.]

[Footnote 8: Strike.]

[Footnote 9: Strike.]

Infant labour, unhappily now so frequent in all kinds of factories,
and the great prevalence of female workers, is another evil of a very
serious kind in the manufacturing districts. We do not propose to
enter into the question, recently so fiercely agitated in the
legislature, as to the practicability of substituting a compulsory
ten-hours' bill for the twelve hours' at present in operation.
Anxious to avoid all topics on which there is a difference of opinion
among able and patriotic men, we merely state this prevalence and
precocity of juvenile labour in the manufacturing and mining
districts as _a fact_ which all must deplore, and which is attended
with the most unhappy effects on the rising generation. The great
majority, probably nine-tenths, of all the workers in cotton-mills or
printfields, are females. We have heard much of the profligacy and
licentiousness which pervade such establishments; but though that may
be too true in some cases, it is far from being universal, or even
general; and there are numerous instances of female virtue being as
jealously guarded and effectually preserved in such establishments,
as in the most secluded rural districts. The real evils--and they
follow universally from such employment of juvenile