No More Learning

He
was so much shocked by the cunning and hardheartedness of money-lenders
that he made laws against usury; and the consequence was that the
borrower, who, if he had been left unprotected, would have got money at
ten per cent. , could hardly, when protected, get it at fifteen per cent.
Some eminent political philosophers of the last century exposed with
great ability the folly of such legislation, and, by doing so, rendered
a great service to mankind. There has been a reaction, a reaction which
has doubtless produced much good, but which like most reactions, has not
been without evils and dangers. Our statesmen cannot now be accused of
being busybodies. But I am afraid that there is, even in some of the
ablest and most upright among them a tendency to the opposite fault.
I will give an instance of what I mean. Fifteen years ago it became
evident that railroads would soon, in every part of the kingdom,
supersede to a great extent the old highways. The tracing of the
new routes which were to join all the chief cities, ports, and naval
arsenals of the island was a matter of the highest national importance.
But, unfortunately, those who should have acted for the nation, refused
to interfere. Consequently, numerous questions which were really public,
questions which concerned the public convenience, the public prosperity,
the public security, were treated as private questions. That the whole
society was interested in having a good system of internal communication
seemed to be forgotten. The speculator who wanted a large dividend
on his shares, the landowner who wanted a large price for his acres,
obtained a full hearing. But nobody applied to be heard on behalf of
the community. The effects of that great error we feel, and we shall not
soon cease to feel. Unless I am greatly mistaken, we are in danger of
committing to-night an error of the same kind. The honourable member for
Montrose (Mr Hume. ) and my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield
think that the question before us is merely a question between the old
and the new theories of commerce. They cannot understand how any
friend of free trade can wish the Legislature to interfere between the
capitalist and the labourer. They say, "You do not make a law to settle
the price of gloves, or the texture of gloves, or the length of credit
which the glover shall give. You leave it to him to determine whether
he will charge high or low prices, whether he will use strong or
flimsy materials, whether he will trust or insist on ready money. You
acknowledge that these are matters which he ought to be left to settle
with his customers, and that we ought not to interfere. It is possible
that he may manage his shop ill. But it is certain that we shall manage
it ill. On the same grounds on which you leave the seller of gloves and
the buyer of gloves to make their own contract, you ought to leave the
seller of labour and the buyer of labour to make their own contract. "

I have a great respect, Sir, for those who reason thus: but I cannot see
this matter in the light in which it appears to them; and, though I may
distrust my own judgment, I must be guided by it. I am, I believe, as
strongly attached as any member of this House to the principle of free
trade, rightly understood. Trade, considered merely as trade, considered
merely with reference to the pecuniary interest of the contracting
parties, can hardly be too free. But there is a great deal of trade
which cannot be considered merely as trade, and which affects higher
than pecuniary interests. And to say that Government never ought to
regulate such trade is a monstrous proposition, a proposition at which
Adam Smith would have stood aghast. We impose some restrictions on trade
for purposes of police. Thus, we do not suffer everybody who has a cab
and a horse to ply for passengers in the streets of London. We do not
leave the fare to be determined by the supply and the demand. We do not
permit a driver to extort a guinea for going half a mile on a rainy day
when there is no other vehicle on the stand. We impose some restrictions
on trade for the sake of revenue. Thus, we forbid a farmer to cultivate
tobacco on his own ground. We impose some restrictions on trade for
the sake of national defence. Thus we compel a man who would rather be
ploughing or weaving to go into the militia; and we fix the amount of
pay which he shall receive without asking his consent. Nor is there in
all this anything inconsistent with the soundest political economy. For
the science of political economy teaches us only that we ought not on
commercial grounds to interfere with the liberty of commerce; and we,
in the cases which I have put, interfere with the liberty of commerce on
higher than commercial grounds.

And now, Sir, to come closer to the case with which we have to deal, I
say, first, that where the health of the community is concerned, it may
be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals;
and to this proposition I am quite sure that Her Majesty's Government
will cordially assent. I have just read a very interesting report signed
by two members of that Government, the Duke of Buccleuch, and the noble
earl who was lately Chief Commissioner of the Woods and Forests, and
who is now Secretary for Ireland (The Earl of Lincoln. ); and, since that
report was laid before the House, the noble earl himself has, with the
sanction of the Cabinet, brought in a bill for the protection of
the public health. By this bill it is provided that no man shall be
permitted to build a house on his own land in any great town without
giving notice to certain Commissioners. No man is to sink a cellar
without the consent of these Commissioners. The house must not be of
less than a prescribed width. No new house must be built without a
drain. If an old house has no drain, the Commissioners may order the
owner to make a drain. If he refuses, they make a drain for him, and
send him in the bill. They may order him to whitewash his house. If he
refuses, they may send people with pails and brushes to whitewash it for
him, at his charge. Now, suppose that some proprietor of houses at Leeds
or Manchester were to expostulate with the Government in the language in
which the Government has expostulated with the supporters of this bill
for the regulation of factories. Suppose he were to say to the noble
earl, "Your lordship professes to be a friend to free trade. Your
lordship's doctrine is that everybody ought to be at liberty to buy
cheap and to sell dear. Why then may not I run up a house as cheap as
I can, and let my rooms as dear as I can? Your lordship does not like
houses without drains. Do not take one of mine then. You think my
bedrooms filthy. Nobody forces you to sleep in them. Use your own
liberty: but do not restrain that of your neighbours. I can find many
a family willing to pay a shilling a week for leave to live in what
you call a hovel. And why am not I to take the shilling which they are
willing to give me? And why are not they to have such shelter as, for
that shilling, I can afford them? Why did you send a man without my
consent to clean my house, and then force me to pay for what I never
ordered? My tenants thought the house clean enough for them; or they
would not have been my tenants; and, if they and I were satisfied,
why did you, in direct defiance of all the principles of free trade,
interfere between us? " This reasoning, Sir, is exactly of a piece
with the reasoning of the honourable Member for Montrose, and of my
honourable friend the Member for Sheffield. If the noble earl will
allow me to make a defence for him, I believe that he would answer the
objection thus: "I hold," he would say, "the sound doctrine of free
trade. But your doctrine of free trade is an exaggeration, a caricature
of the sound doctrine; and by exhibiting such a caricature you bring
discredit on the sound doctrine. We should have nothing to do with the
contracts between you and your tenants, if those contracts affected only
pecuniary interests. But higher than pecuniary interests are at stake.
It concerns the commonwealth that the great body of the people should
not live in a way which makes life wretched and short, which enfeebles
the body and pollutes the mind. If, by living in houses which resemble
hogstyes, great numbers of our countrymen have contracted the tastes
of hogs, if they have become so familiar with filth and stench and
contagion, that they burrow without reluctance in holes which would turn
the stomach of any man of cleanly habits, that is only an additional
proof that we have too long neglected our duties, and an additional
reason for our now performing them. "

Secondly, I say that where the public morality is concerned it may be
the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals.
Take the traffic in licentious books and pictures. Will anybody deny
that the State may, with propriety, interdict that traffic? Or take the
case of lotteries. I have, we will suppose, an estate for which I
wish to get twenty thousand pounds. I announce my intention to issue a
thousand tickets at twenty pounds each. The holder of the number which
is first drawn is to have the estate. But the magistrate interferes; the
contract between me and the purchasers of my tickets is annulled; and
I am forced to pay a heavy penalty for having made such a contract. I
appeal to the principle of free trade, as expounded by the honourable
gentlemen the Members for Montrose and Sheffield. I say to you, the
legislators who have restricted my liberty, "What business have you to
interfere between a buyer and a seller? If you think the speculation
a bad one, do not take tickets. But do not interdict other people from
judging for themselves. " Surely you would answer, "You would be right if
this were a mere question of trade: but it is a question of morality.
We prohibit you from disposing of your property in this particular mode,
because it is a mode which tends to encourage a most pernicious habit of
mind, a habit of mind incompatible with all the qualities on which the
well-being of individuals and of nations depends. "

It must then, I think, be admitted that, where health is concerned, and
where morality is concerned, the State is justified in interfering with
the contracts of individuals. And, if this be admitted, it follows that
the case with which we now have to do is a case for interference.

Will it be denied that the health of a large part of the rising
generation may be seriously affected by the contracts which this bill
is intended to regulate? Can any man who has read the evidence which is
before us, can any man who has ever observed young people, can any man
who remembers his own sensations when he was young, doubt that twelve
hours a day of labour in a factory is too much for a lad of thirteen?

Or will it be denied that this is a question in which public morality is
concerned? Can any one doubt,--none, I am sure, of my friends around
me doubts,--that education is a matter of the highest importance to
the virtue and happiness of a people? Now we know that there can be no
education without leisure. It is evident that, after deducting from
the day twelve hours for labour in a factory, and the additional hours
necessary for exercise, refreshment, and repose, there will not remain
time enough for education.

I have now, I think, shown that this bill is not in principle
objectionable; and yet I have not touched the strongest part of our
case. I hold that, where public health is concerned, and where public
morality is concerned, the State may be justified in regulating even the
contracts of adults. But we propose to regulate only the contracts of
infants. Now, was there ever a civilised society in which the contracts
of infants were not under some regulation? Is there a single member of
this House who will say that a wealthy minor of thirteen ought to be at
perfect liberty to execute a conveyance of his estate, or to give a bond
for fifty thousand pounds? If anybody were so absurd as to say, "What
has the Legislature to do with the matter? Why cannot you leave trade
free? Why do you pretend to understand the boy's interest better than he
understands it? "--you would answer; "When he grows up, he may squander
his fortune away if he likes: but at present the State is his guardian;
and he shall not ruin himself till he is old enough to know what he
is about. " The minors whom we wish to protect have not indeed large
property to throw away: but they are not the less our wards. Their only
inheritance, the only fund to which they must look for their subsistence
through life, is the sound mind in the sound body. And is it not our
duty to prevent them from wasting their most precious wealth before they
know its value?

But, it is said, this bill, though it directly limits only the labour
of infants, will, by an indirect operation, limit also the labour of
adults. Now, Sir, though I am not prepared to vote for a bill directly
limiting the labour of adults, I will plainly say that I do not think
that the limitation of the labour of adults would necessarily produce
all those frightful consequences which we have heard predicted. You
cheer me in very triumphant tones, as if I had uttered some monstrous
paradox. Pray, does it not occur to any of you that the labour of adults
is now limited in this country? Are you not aware that you are living in
a society in which the labour of adults is limited to six days in seven?
It is you, not I, who maintain a paradox opposed to the opinions and
the practices of all nations and ages. Did you ever hear of a single
civilised State since the beginning of the world in which a certain
portion of time was not set apart for the rest and recreation of adults
by public authority? In general, this arrangement has been sanctioned
by religion. The Egyptians, the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, had their
holidays: the Hindoo has his holidays: the Mussulman has his holidays:
there are holidays in the Greek Church, holidays in the Church of Rome,
holidays in the Church of England. Is it not amusing to hear a gentleman
pronounce with confidence that any legislation which limits the labour
of adults must produce consequences fatal to society, without once
reflecting that in the society in which he lives, and in every
other society that exists, or ever has existed, there has been such
legislation without any evil consequence? It is true that a Puritan
Government in England, and an Atheistical Government in France,
abolished the old holidays as superstitious. But those Governments felt
it to be absolutely necessary to institute new holidays. Civil festivals
were substituted for religious festivals. You will find among the
ordinances of the Long Parliament a law providing that, in exchange for
the days of rest and amusement which the people had been used to enjoy
at Easter, Whitsuntide, and Christmas, the second Tuesday in every month
should be given to the working man, and that any apprentice who was
forced to work on the second Tuesday of any month might have his master
up before a magistrate. The French Jacobins decreed that the Sunday
should no longer be a day of rest; but they instituted another day of
rest, the Decade. They swept away the holidays of the Roman Catholic
Church; but they instituted another set of holidays, the Sansculottides,
one sacred to Genius, one to Industry, one to Opinion, and so on. I say,
therefore, that the practice of limiting by law the time of the labour
of adults is so far from being, as some gentlemen seem to think, an
unheard of and monstrous practice, that it is a practice as universal as
cookery, as the wearing of clothes, as the use of domestic animals.

And has this practice been proved by experience to be pernicious? Let us
take the instance with which we are most familiar. Let us inquire what
has been the effect of those laws which, in our own country, limit the
labour of adults to six days in every seven. It is quite unnecessary to
discuss the question whether Christians be or be not bound by a divine
command to observe the Sunday. For it is evident that, whether our
weekly holiday be of divine or of human institution, the effect on the
temporal interests of Society will be exactly the same. Now, is there a
single argument in the whole Speech of my honourable friend the Member
for Sheffield which does not tell just as strongly against the laws
which enjoin the observance of the Sunday as against the bill on our
table? Surely, if his reasoning is good for hours, it must be equally
good for days.

He says, "If this limitation be good for the working people, rely on it
that they will find it out, and that they will themselves establish it
without any law. " Why not reason in the same way about the Sunday? Why
not say, "If it be a good thing for the people of London to shut their
shops one day in seven, they will find it out, and will shut their shops
without a law? " Sir, the answer is obvious. I have no doubt that, if
you were to poll the shopkeepers of London, you would find an immense
majority, probably a hundred to one, in favour of closing shops on the
Sunday; and yet it is absolutely necessary to give to the wish of the
majority the sanction of a law; for, if there were no such law, the
minority, by opening their shops, would soon force the majority to do
the same.

But, says my honourable friend, you cannot limit the labour of adults
unless you fix wages. This proposition he lays down repeatedly,
assures us that it is incontrovertible, and indeed seems to think it
self-evident; for he has not taken the trouble to prove it. Sir, my
answer shall be very short. We have, during many centuries, limited the
labour of adults to six days in seven; and yet we have not fixed the
rate of wages.

But, it is said, you cannot legislate for all trades; and therefore you
had better not legislate for any. Look at the poor sempstress. She works
far longer and harder than the factory child. She sometimes plies her
needle fifteen, sixteen hours in the twenty-four. See how the housemaid
works, up at six every morning, and toiling up stairs and down stairs
till near midnight. You own that you cannot do anything for the
sempstress and the housemaid. Why then trouble yourself about the
factory child? Take care that by protecting one class you do not
aggravate the hardships endured by the classes which you cannot protect.
Why, Sir, might not all this be said, word for word, against the laws
which enjoin the observance of the Sunday? There are classes of people
whom you cannot prevent from working on the Sunday. There are classes of
people whom, if you could, you ought not to prevent from working on the
Sunday. Take the sempstress, of whom so much has been said. You cannot
keep her from sewing and hemming all Sunday in her garret. But you
do not think that a reason for suffering Covent Garden Market, and
Leadenhall Market, and Smithfield Market, and all the shops from Mile
End to Hyde Park to be open all Sunday. Nay, these factories about which
we are debating,--does anybody propose that they shall be allowed to
work all Sunday? See then how inconsistent you are. You think it unjust
to limit the labour of the factory child to ten hours a day, because you
cannot limit the labour of the sempstress. And yet you see no injustice
in limiting the labour of the factory child, aye, and of the factory
man, to six days in the week, though you cannot limit the labour of the
sempstress.

But, you say, by protecting one class we shall aggravate the sufferings
of all the classes which we cannot protect. You say this; but you do not
prove it; and all experience proves the contrary. We interfere on the
Sunday to close the shops. We do not interfere with the labour of the
housemaid. But are the housemaids of London more severely worked on the
Sunday than on other days? The fact notoriously is the reverse. For your
legislation keeps the public feeling in a right state, and thus protects
indirectly those whom it cannot protect directly.

Will my honourable friend the Member for Sheffield maintain that the
law which limits the number of working days has been injurious to the
working population? I am certain that he will not. How then can he
expect me to believe that a law which limits the number of working hours
must necessarily be injurious to the working population? Yet he and
those who agree with him seem to wonder at our dulness because we do
not at once admit the truth of the doctrine which they propound on
this subject. They reason thus. We cannot reduce the number of hours of
labour in factories without reducing the amount of production. We cannot
reduce the amount of production without reducing the remuneration of the
labourer. Meanwhile, foreigners, who are at liberty to work till they
drop down dead at their looms, will soon beat us out of all the markets
of the world. Wages will go down fast. The condition of our working
people will be far worse than it is; and our unwise interference will,
like the unwise interference of our ancestors with the dealings of the
corn factor and the money lender, increase the distress of the very
class which we wish to relieve.

Now, Sir, I fully admit that there might be such a limitation of the
hours of labour as would produce the evil consequences with which we are
threatened; and this, no doubt, is a very good reason for legislating
with great caution, for feeling our way, for looking well to all the
details of this bill. But it is certainly not true that every limitation
of the hours of labour must produce these consequences. And I am, I must
say, surprised when I hear men of eminent ability and knowledge lay down
the proposition that a diminution of the time of labour must be followed
by diminution of the wages of labour, as a proposition universally
true, as a proposition capable of being strictly demonstrated, as
a proposition about which there can be no more doubt than about any
theorem in Euclid. Sir, I deny the truth of the proposition; and for
this plain reason. We have already, by law, greatly reduced the time of
labour in factories. Thirty years ago, the late Sir Robert Peel told the
House that it was a common practice to make children of eight years of
age toil in mills fifteen hours a day. A law has since been made which
prohibits persons under eighteen years of age from working in mills
more than twelve hours a day. That law was opposed on exactly the same
grounds on which the bill before us is opposed. Parliament was told
then, as it is told now, that with the time of labour the quantity of
production would decrease, that with the quantity of production the
wages would decrease, that our manufacturers would be unable to contend
with foreign manufacturers, and that the condition of the labouring
population instead of being made better by the interference of the
Legislature would be made worse. Read over those debates; and you may
imagine that you are reading the debate of this evening. Parliament
disregarded these prophecies. The time of labour was limited. Have wages
fallen? Has the cotton trade left Manchester for France or Germany? Has
the condition of the working people become more miserable? Is it not
universally acknowledged that the evils which were so confidently
predicted have not come to pass? Let me be understood. I am not arguing
that, because a law which reduced the hours of daily labour from fifteen
to twelve did not reduce wages, a law reducing those hours from twelve
to ten or eleven cannot possibly reduce wages. That would be very
inconclusive reasoning. What I say is this, that, since a law which
reduced the hours of daily labour from fifteen to twelve has not reduced
wages, the proposition that every reduction of the hours of labour must
necessarily reduce wages is a false proposition. There is evidently
some flaw in that demonstration which my honourable friend thinks so
complete; and what the flaw is we may perhaps discover if we look at the
analogous case to which I have so often referred.

Sir, exactly three hundred years ago, great religious changes were
taking place in England. Much was said and written, in that inquiring
and innovating age, about the question whether Christians were under a
religious obligation to rest from labour on one day in the week; and it
is well known that the chief Reformers, both here and on the Continent,
denied the existence of any such obligation. Suppose then that, in 1546,
Parliament had made a law that they should thenceforth be no distinction
between the Sunday and any other day. Now, Sir, our opponents, if they
are consistent with themselves, must hold that such a law would have
immensely increased the wealth of the country and the remuneration of
the working man. What an effect, if their principles be sound, must have
been produced by the addition of one sixth to the time of labour!
What
an increase of production! What a rise of wages! How utterly unable must
the foreign artisan, who still had his days of festivity and of repose,
have found himself to maintain a competition with a people whose shops
were open, whose markets were crowded, whose spades and axes, and
planes, and hods, and anvils, and looms were at work from morning till
night on three hundred and sixty-five days a year! The Sundays of three
hundred years make up fifty years of our working days. We know what the
industry of fifty years can do. We know what marvels the industry of
the last fifty years has wrought. The arguments of my honourable friend
irresistibly lead us to this conclusion, that if, during the last three
centuries, the Sunday had not been observed as a day of rest, we should
have been a far richer, a far more highly civilised people than we
now are, and that the labouring classes especially would have been far
better off than at present. But does he, does any Member of the House,
seriously believe that this would have been the case? For my own part,
I have not the smallest doubt that, if we and our ancestors had, during
the last three centuries, worked just as hard on the Sunday as on the
week days, we should have been at this moment a poorer people and a less
civilised people than we are; that there would have been less production
than there has been, that the wages of the labourer would have been
lower than they are, and that some other nation would have been now
making cotton stuffs and woollen stuffs and cutlery for the whole world.

Of course, Sir, I do not mean to say that a man will not produce more in
a week by working seven days than by working six days. But I very much
doubt whether, at the end of a year, he will generally have produced
more by working seven days a week than by working six days a week; and
I firmly believe that, at the end of twenty years, he will have produced
much less by working seven days a week than by working six days a week.
In the same manner I do not deny that a factory child will produce more,
in a single day, by working twelve hours than by working ten hours, and
by working fifteen hours than by working twelve hours. But I do deny
that a great society in which children work fifteen, or even twelve
hours a day will, in the lifetime of a generation, produce as much as
if those children had worked less. If we consider man merely in a
commercial point of view, if we consider him merely as a machine for
the production of worsted and calico, let us not forget what a piece of
mechanism he is, how fearfully and wonderfully made. We do not treat a
fine horse or a sagacious dog exactly as we treat a spinning jenny. Nor
will any slaveholder, who has sense enough to know his own interest,
treat his human chattels exactly as he treats his horses and his dogs.
And would you treat the free labourer of England like a mere wheel or
pulley? Rely on it that intense labour, beginning too early in life,
continued too long every day, stunting the growth of the body, stunting
the growth of the mind, leaving no time for healthful exercise, leaving
no time for intellectual culture, must impair all those high qualities
which have made our country great. Your overworked boys will become a
feeble and ignoble race of men, the parents of a more feeble and more
ignoble progeny; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the
labourer will injuriously affect those very interests to which his
physical and moral energies have been sacrificed. On the other hand,
a day of rest recurring in every week, two or three hours of leisure,
exercise, innocent amusement or useful study, recurring every day, must
improve the whole man, physically, morally, intellectually; and the
improvement of the man will improve all that the man produces. Why is
it, Sir, that the Hindoo cotton manufacturer, close to whose door
the cotton grows, cannot, in the bazaar of his own town, maintain
a competition with the English cotton manufacturer, who has to send
thousands of miles for the raw material, and who has then to send the
wrought material thousands of miles to market? You will say that it is
owing to the excellence of our machinery. And to what is the excellence
of our machinery owing? How many of the improvements which have been
made in our machinery do we owe to the ingenuity and patient thought of
working men? Adam Smith tells us in the first chapter of his great work,
that you can hardly go to a factory without seeing some very pretty
machine,--that is his expression,--devised by some labouring man.
Hargraves, the inventor of the spinning jenny, was a common artisan.
Crompton, the inventor of the mule jenny, was a working man. How many
hours of the labour of children would do so much for our manufactures as
one of these improvements has done? And in what sort of society are such
improvements most likely to be made? Surely in a society in which the
faculties of the working people are developed by education. How long
will you wait before any negro, working under the lash in Louisiana,
will contrive a better machinery for squeezing the sugar canes?
My honourable friend seems to me, in all his reasonings about the
commercial prosperity of nations, to overlook entirely the chief cause
on which that prosperity depends. What is it, Sir, that makes the great
difference between country and country? Not the exuberance of soil; not
the mildness of climate; not mines, nor havens, nor rivers. These things
are indeed valuable when put to their proper use by human intelligence:
but human intelligence can do much without them; and they without human
intelligence can do nothing. They exist in the highest degree in regions
of which the inhabitants are few, and squalid, and barbarous, and naked,
and starving; while on sterile rocks, amidst unwholesome marshes, and
under inclement skies, may be found immense populations, well fed, well
lodged, well clad, well governed. Nature meant Egypt and Sicily to be
the gardens of the world. They once were so. Is it anything in the earth
or in the air that makes Scotland more prosperous than Egypt, that makes
Holland more prosperous than Sicily? No; it was the Scotchman that made
Scotland; it was the Dutchman that made Holland. Look at North America.
Two centuries ago the sites on which now arise mills, and hotels, and
banks, and colleges, and churches, and the Senate Houses of flourishing
commonwealths, were deserts abandoned to the panther and the bear. What
has made the change? Was it the rich mould, or the redundant rivers? No:
the prairies were as fertile, the Ohio and the Hudson were as broad
and as full then as now. Was the improvement the effect of some great
transfer of capital from the old world to the new? No, the emigrants
generally carried out with them no more than a pittance; but they
carried out the English heart, and head, and arm; and the English heart
and head and arm turned the wilderness into cornfield and orchard, and
the huge trees of the primeval forest into cities and fleets. Man, man
is the great instrument that produces wealth. The natural difference
between Campania and Spitzbergen is trifling, when compared with the
difference between a country inhabited by men full of bodily and
mental vigour, and a country inhabited by men sunk in bodily and mental
decrepitude. Therefore it is that we are not poorer but richer, because
we have, through many ages, rested from our labour one day in seven.
That day is not lost. While industry is suspended, while the plough lies
in the furrow, while the Exchange is silent, while no smoke ascends from
the factory, a process is going on quite as important to the wealth of
nations as any process which is performed on more busy days. Man,
the machine of machines, the machine compared with which all the
contrivances of the Watts and the Arkwrights are worthless, is repairing
and winding up, so that he returns to his labours on the Monday with
clearer intellect, with livelier spirits, with renewed corporal
vigour. Never will I believe that what makes a population stronger, and
healthier, and wiser, and better, can ultimately make it poorer. You try
to frighten us by telling us, that in some German factories, the young
work seventeen hours in the twenty-four, that they work so hard that
among thousands there is not one who grows to such a stature that he can
be admitted into the army; and you ask whether, if we pass this bill, we
can possibly hold our own against such competition as this? Sir, I laugh
at the thought of such competition. If ever we are forced to yield the
foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it, not to a
race of degenerate dwarfs, but to some people pre-eminently vigorous in
body and in mind.

For these reasons, Sir, I approve of the principle of this bill, and
shall, without hesitation, vote for the second reading. To what extent
we ought to reduce the hours of labour is a question of more difficulty.
I think that we are in the situation of a physician who has satisfied
himself that there is a disease, and that there is a specific medicine
for the disease, but who is not certain what quantity of that medicine
the patient's constitution will bear. Such a physician would probably
administer his remedy by small doses, and carefully watch its operation.
I cannot help thinking that, by at once reducing the hours of labour
from twelve to ten, we should hazard too much. The change is great, and
ought to be cautiously and gradually made. Suppose that there should be
an immediate fall of wages, which is not impossible. Might there not
be a violent reaction? Might not the public take up a notion that our
legislation had been erroneous in principle, though, in truth, our error
would have been an error, not of principle, but merely of degree? Might
not Parliament be induced to retrace its steps? Might we not find it
difficult to maintain even the present limitation? The wisest course
would, in my opinion, be to reduce the hours of labour from twelve to
eleven, to observe the effect of that experiment, and if, as I hope
and believe, the result should be satisfactory, then to make a further
reduction from eleven to ten. This is a question, however, which will be
with more advantage considered when we are in Committee.

One word, Sir, before I sit down, in answer to my noble friend near me.
(Lord Morpeth. ) He seems to think that this bill is ill timed. I own
that I cannot agree with him. We carried up on Monday last to the bar
of the Lords a bill which will remove the most hateful and pernicious
restriction that ever was laid on trade. Nothing can be more proper
than to apply, in the same week, a remedy to a great evil of a directly
opposite kind. As lawgivers, we have two great faults to confess and to
repair. We have done that which we ought not to have done. We have left
undone that which we ought to have done. We have regulated that which we
should have left to regulate itself. We have left unregulated that which
we were bound to regulate. We have given to some branches of industry
a protection which has proved their bane. We have withheld from public
health and public morals the protection which was their due. We have
prevented the labourer from buying his loaf where he could get it
cheapest; but we have not prevented him from ruining his body and mind
by premature and immoderate toil. I hope that we have seen the last
both of a vicious system of interference and of a vicious system of
non-interference, and that our poorer countrymen will no longer have
reason to attribute their sufferings either to our meddling or to our
neglect.

*****




THE LITERATURE OF BRITAIN. (NOVEMBER 4, 1846) A SPEECH DELIVERED AT
THE OPENING OF THE EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION ON THE 4TH OF
NOVEMBER 1846.

I thank you, Gentlemen, for this cordial reception. I have thought it
right to steal a short time from duties not unimportant for the purpose
of lending my aid to a an undertaking calculated, as I think, to raise
the credit and to promote the best interests of the city which has so
many claims on my gratitude.

The Directors of our Institution have requested me to propose to you as
a toast the Literature of Britain. They could not have assigned to me
a more agreeable duty. They chief object of this Institution is, I
conceive, to impart knowledge through the medium of our own language.
Edinburgh is already rich in libraries worthy of her fame as a seat
of literature and a seat of jurisprudence. A man of letters can here
without difficulty obtain access to repositories filled with the wisdom
of many ages and of many nations. But something was still wanting.
We still wanted a library open to that large, that important, that
respectable class which, though by no means destitute of liberal
curiosity or of sensibility to literary pleasures, is yet forced to
be content with what is written in our own tongue. For that class
especially, I do not say exclusively, this library is intended.
Our directors, I hope, will not be satisfied, I, as a member, shall
certainly not be satisfied, till we possess a noble and complete
collection of English books, till it is impossible to seek in vain
on our shelves for a single English book which is valuable either on
account of matter or on account of manner, which throws any light on our
civil, ecclesiastical, intellectual, or social history, which, in short,
can afford either useful instruction or harmless amusement.

From such a collection, placed within the reach of that large and
valuable class which I have mentioned, I am disposed to expect great
good. And when I say this, I do not take into the account those rare
cases to which my valued friend, the Lord Provost (Mr Adam Black. ), so
happily alluded. It is indeed not impossible that some man of genius who
may enrich our literature with imperishable eloquence or song, or who
may extend the empire of our race over matter, may feel in our reading
room, for the first time the consciousness of powers yet undeveloped.
It is not impossible that our volumes may suggest the first thought of
something great to some future Burns, or Watt, or Arkwright. But I do
not speak of these extraordinary cases. What I confidently anticipate is
that, through the whole of that class whose benefit we have peculiarly
in view, there will be a moral and an intellectual improvement; that
many hours, which might otherwise be wasted in folly or in vice, will
be employed in pursuits which, while they afford the highest and most
lasting pleasure, are not only harmless, but purifying and elevating.
My own experience, my own observation, justifies me in entertaining this
hope. I have had opportunities, both in this and in other countries, of
forming some estimate of the effect which is likely to be produced by
a good collection of books on a society of young men. There is, I will
venture to say, no judicious commanding officer of a regiment who
will not tell you that the vicinity of a valuable library will improve
perceptibly the whole character of a mess. I well knew one eminent
military servant of the East India Company, a man of great and various
accomplishments, a man honourably distinguished both in war and in
diplomacy, a man who enjoyed the confidence of some of the greatest
generals and statesmen of our time. When I asked him how, having left
his country while still a boy, and having passed his youth at military
stations in India, he had been able to educate himself, his answer was,
that he had been stationed in the neighbourhood of an excellent library,
that he had been allowed free access to the books, and that they had, at
the most critical time of his life, decided his character, and saved him
from being a mere smoking, card-playing, punch-drinking lounger.

Some of the objections which have been made to such institutions as
ours have been so happily and completely refuted by my friend the Lord
Provost, and by the Most Reverend Prelate who has honoured us with his
presence this evening (Archbishop Whateley. ), that it would be idle to
say again what has been so well said. There is, however, one objection
which, with your permission, I will notice. Some men, of whom I wish
to speak with great respect, are haunted, as it seems to me, with an
unreasonable fear of what they call superficial knowledge. Knowledge,
they say, which really deserves the name, is a great blessing to
mankind, the ally of virtue, the harbinger of freedom. But such
knowledge must be profound. A crowd of people who have a smattering of
mathematics, a smattering of astronomy, a smattering of chemistry, who
have read a little poetry and a little history, is dangerous to the
commonwealth. Such half-knowledge is worse than ignorance. And then the
authority of Pope is vouched. Drink deep or taste not; shallow draughts
intoxicate: drink largely; and that will sober you. I must confess that
the danger which alarms these gentlemen never seemed to me very serious:
and my reason is this; that I never could prevail on any person who
pronounced superficial knowledge a curse, and profound knowledge a
blessing, to tell me what was his standard of profundity. The argument
proceeds on the supposition that there is some line between profound
and superficial knowledge similar to that which separates truth from
falsehood. I know of no such line. When we talk of men of deep science,
do we mean that they have got to the bottom or near the bottom of
science? Do we mean that they know all that is capable of being known?
Do we mean even that they know, in their own especial department, all
that the smatterers of the next generation will know? Why, if we compare
the little truth that we know with the infinite mass of truth which we
do not know, we are all shallow together; and the greatest philosophers
that ever lived would be the first to confess their shallowness. If we
could call up the first of human beings, if we could call up Newton,
and ask him whether, even in those sciences in which he had no rival, he
considered himself as profoundly knowing, he would have told us that he
was but a smatterer like ourselves, and that the difference between his
knowledge and ours vanished, when compared with the quantity of truth
still undiscovered, just as the distance between a person at the foot of
Ben Lomond and at the top of Ben Lomond vanishes when compared with the
distance of the fixed stars.

It is evident then that those who are afraid of superficial knowledge
do not mean by superficial knowledge knowledge which is superficial when
compared with the whole quantity of truth capable of being known. For,
in that sense, all human knowledge is, and always has been, and always
must be, superficial. What then is the standard? Is it the same two
years together in any country? Is it the same, at the same moment, in
any two countries? Is it not notorious that the profundity of one age
is the shallowness of the next; that the profundity of one nation is the
shallowness of a neighbouring nation? Ramohun Roy passed, among Hindoos,
for a man of profound Western learning; but he would have been but a
very superficial member of this Institute. Strabo was justly entitled
to be called a profound geographer eighteen hundred years ago. But
a teacher of geography, who had never heard of America, would now be
laughed at by the girls of a boarding-school. What would now be thought
of the greatest chemist of 1746, or of the greatest geologist of
1746? The truth is that, in all experimental science, mankind is, of
necessity, constantly advancing. Every generation, of course, has its
front rank and its rear rank; but the rear rank of a later generation
occupies the ground which was occupied by the front rank of a former
generation.

You remember Gulliver's adventures. First he is shipwrecked in a country
of little men; and he is a Colossus among them. He strides over the
walls of their capital: he stands higher than the cupola of their great
temple: he tugs after him a royal fleet: he stretches his legs; and a
royal army, with drums beating and colours flying, marches through the
gigantic arch: he devours a whole granary for breakfast, eats a herd of
cattle for dinner, and washes down his meal with all the hogsheads of a
cellar. In his next voyage he is among men sixty feet high. He who, in
Lilliput, used to take people up in his hand in order that he might be
able to hear them, is himself taken up in the hands and held to the
ears of his masters. It is all that he can do to defend himself with his
hanger against the rats and mice. The court ladies amuse themselves with
seeing him fight wasps and frogs: the monkey runs off with him to the
chimney top: the dwarf drops him into the cream jug and leaves him to
swim for his life. Now, was Gulliver a tall or a short man? Why, in his
own house at Rotherhithe, he was thought a man of the ordinary stature.
Take him to Lilliput; and he is Quinbus Flestrin, the Man Mountain. Take
him to Brobdingnag, and he is Grildrig, the little Manikin. It is the
same in science. The pygmies of one society would have passed for giants
in another.

It might be amusing to institute a comparison between one of the
profoundly learned men of the thirteenth century and one of the
superficial students who will frequent our library. Take the great
philosopher of the time of Henry the Third of England, or Alexander the
Third of Scotland, the man renowned all over the island, and even as far
as Italy and Spain, as the first of astronomers and chemists. What is
his astronomy? He is a firm believer in the Ptolemaic system. He never
heard of the law of gravitation. Tell him that the succession of day and
night is caused by the turning of the earth on its axis. Tell him
that, in consequence of this motion, the polar diameter of the earth is
shorter than the equatorial diameter. Tell him that the succession of
summer and winter is caused by the revolution of the earth round the
sun. If he does not set you down for an idiot, he lays an information
against you before the Bishop, and has you burned for a heretic. To do
him justice, however, if he is ill informed on these points, there
are other points on which Newton and Laplace were mere children when
compared with him. He can cast your nativity. He knows what will happen
when Saturn is in the House of Life, and what will happen when Mars is
in conjunction with the Dragon's Tail. He can read in the stars whether
an expedition will be successful, whether the next harvest will be
plentiful, which of your children will be fortunate in marriage, and
which will be lost at sea. Happy the State, happy the family, which
is guided by the counsels of so profound a man! And what but mischief,
public and private, can we expect from the temerity and conceit of
scolists who know no more about the heavenly bodies than what they have
learned from Sir John Herschel's beautiful little volume. But, to speak
seriously, is not a little truth better than a great deal of falsehood?
Is not the man who, in the evenings of a fortnight, has acquired a
correct notion of the solar system, a more profound astronomer than a
man who has passed thirty years in reading lectures about the primum
mobile, and in drawing schemes of horoscopes?

Or take chemistry. Our philosopher of the thirteenth century shall be,
if you please, an universal genius, chemist as well as astronomer.
He has perhaps got so far as to know, that if he mixes charcoal and
saltpetre in certain proportions and then applies fire, there will be
an explosion which will shatter all his retorts and aludels; and he is
proud of knowing what will in a later age be familiar to all the idle
boys in the kingdom. But there are departments of science in which he
need not fear the rivalry of Black, or Lavoisier, or Cavendish, or Davy.
He is in hot pursuit of the philosopher's stone, of the stone that is
to bestow wealth, and health, and longevity. He has a long array of
strangely shaped vessels, filled with red oil and white oil, constantly
boiling. The moment of projection is at hand; and soon all his kettles
and gridirons will be turned into pure gold. Poor Professor Faraday can
do nothing of the sort. I should deceive you if I held out to you the
smallest hope that he will ever turn your halfpence into sovereigns. But
if you can induce him to give at our Institute a course of lectures such
as I once heard him give at the Royal Institution to children in the
Christmas holidays, I can promise you that you will know more about the
effects produced on bodies by heat and moisture than was known to some
alchemists who, in the middle ages, were thought worthy of the patronage
of kings.

As it has been in science so it has been in literature. Compare the
literary acquirements of the great men of the thirteenth century with
those which will be within the reach of many who will frequent our
reading room. As to Greek learning, the profound man of the thirteenth
century was absolutely on a par with the superficial man of the
nineteenth. In the modern languages, there was not, six hundred years
ago, a single volume which is now read. The library of our profound
scholar must have consisted entirely of Latin books. We will suppose
him to have had both a large and a choice collection. We will allow him
thirty, nay forty manuscripts, and among them a Virgil, a Terence, a
Lucan, an Ovid, a Statius, a great deal of Livy, a great deal of Cicero.
In allowing him all this, we are dealing most liberally with him; for it
is much more likely that his shelves were filled with treaties on school
divinity and canon law, composed by writers whose names the world has
very wisely forgotten. But, even if we suppose him to have possessed
all that is most valuable in the literature of Rome, I say with perfect
confidence that, both in respect of intellectual improvement, and in
respect of intellectual pleasures, he was far less favourably situated
than a man who now, knowing only the English language, has a bookcase
filled with the best English works. Our great man of the Middle Ages
could not form any conception of any tragedy approaching Macbeth or
Lear, or of any comedy equal to Henry the Fourth or Twelfth Night. The
best epic poem that he had read was far inferior to the Paradise Lost;
and all the tomes of his philosophers were not worth a page of the Novum
Organum.

The Novum Organum, it is true, persons who know only English must read
in a translation: and this reminds me of one great advantage which such
persons will derive from our Institution. They will, in our library, be
able to form some acquaintance with the master minds of remote ages and
foreign countries. A large part of what is best worth knowing in ancient
literature, and in the literature of France, Italy, Germany, and Spain,
has been translated into our own tongue. It is scarcely possible that
the translation of any book of the highest class can be equal to the
original. But, though the finer touches may be lost in the copy, the
great outlines will remain. An Englishman who never saw the frescoes in
the Vatican may yet, from engravings, form some notion of the exquisite
grace of Raphael, and of the sublimity and energy of Michael Angelo. And
so the genius of Homer is seen in the poorest version of the Iliad; the
genius of Cervantes is seen in the poorest version of Don Quixote. Let
it not be supposed that I wish to dissuade any person from studying
either the ancient languages or the languages of modern Europe. Far from
it. I prize most highly those keys of knowledge; and I think that no man
who has leisure for study ought to be content until he possesses several
of them.