boys and girls earning the means of support in the mill, than starving by the road side, shivering on the pavement, or even conveyed in an omnibus to Bridewell.

Most worshipful and compassionate philanthropists, to whom such a declaration will probably appear the very consummation of cruelty, and perhaps of iniquity, we pray of you to reflect upon the simple words "earning the means of their support." It is a physiological fact, of which you probably are not aware, that these young people have mouths and stomachs; it is absolutely true, that they require to be fed, as well as your lap-dogs and fox-hounds. It is probable, also, that they may require some few articles of clothing, if not for the sake of keeping them warm, at least for the protection of delicate nerves; complete nakedness might shock fastidious people. Far be it from us to blame your sympathies for the over-worked children, we only ask you to extend some share of such honourable feelings to their more miserable parents.

Believe, if you please, that mill-owners are worse than all the ogres and giants of the nursery, that the dragon of Wantley is but a faint type of an enormous capitalist, and that "Fee faw fum" is the music unceasingly ground by the wheels of a steamengine; but BELIEVE NOT, that the operatives are destitute of hearts and natural affections, that, as parents, they willingly sacrifice their children, and offer their babes, on the altars of Mammon and Moloch.

The question of juvenile labour is one that concerns the parents, infinitely more than the employers of the children. Manufacturers have not created the system; it has been forced upon them. There never was such a thing as a levying of children by conscription for the service of the mill-owners; there is not one recorded instance of a piecer or cleaner being kidnapped in Manchester by any wholesale dealer in human flesh; negroes have been stolen and purchased to cultivate the estates bequeathed to religious societies in the West Indies, but no such system has ever been adopted in recruiting for the factories. The children are sent to work with the full knowledge and approbation of their parents. It may be said,

"Their poverty and not their will consents." and when this is said, we have got to the very pith and marrow of the question. The operative labours to procure food for himself and his family; if his toil does not bring in a sufficiency for their maintenance, the other branches of the family must give additional labour, in order to increase the common stock, or they must starve. It is sufficiently easy to join in the senseless howl against philosophy and political economy, but there is no getting over the plain fact, that neither man nor boy, woman nor girl, can eat-unless they have food. And yet there are people outside

St. Luke's, who limit the amount of food by the corn laws, and who propose in addition to limit the means of procuring food, by setting bounds to the quantity of employment which a manufacturer can offer. Every body has laughed at the French Princess, who, hearing that the poor had an insufficiency of bread, proposed to feed them with plum cake; but her proposition was absolute wisdom, when compared with the schemes broached by the humanity-mongers of the present day. They tell us to abolish juvenile labour; they reflect not that labour brings wages, and that wages bring bread; their charity is starvation, their humanitya sentence of extermination. Compared with them, Herod was the very model of a merciful governor-for a massacre of innocents was benignant policy, compared with a system of starving an entire generation into misery, and guilt, and death. How glorious is the philanthropy which closes the mill in order to throw open the workhouse, the prison, and the grave!

It is offensive to fine sensibilities that children should work in factories, but is it equally offensive to such delicate feelings that these children should be in existence? There they are, and fed they must be. The mode is to be settled, not with the manufacturer, but with the father and mother. We should gladly see our precious philanthropists setting about it. Suppose one of these humanity-mongers going into the cottage or lodging of a working family, and gravely proposing, that the boys and girls should be prevented from going to the mill for the future. The father declares, that already their united wages are barely sufficient for decent support, and that, in the present state of trade, a reduction of wages is far more probable than a rise. If he could procure food at a cheaper rate, if taxation did not indirectly sweep away more than half of his earnings, if the closing of foreign markets against the goods he produces did not at once limit the supply of employment, and increase the number of those seeking it, he might be able to afford his children more leisure for instruction and amusement; -but to propose as a remedy for a poor man's sufferings the increase of his outgoings, accompanied by the diminution of his incomings, is sheer mockery and insult on the part of a man in his senses, and worse than the drivellings of idiotcy when proposed by anybody else.

Juvenile labour is a family question; it is easy for those who abandon their own domestic duties to whirl through the giddy rounds of dissipation, to forget that the poor have families. They can think of the child, without including the consideration of the parent, for, in their own case, they can think of the parent without the child. But, in any question connected with the operative family, the parent and the child cannot be dissevered. Whatever is evil and wrong in the condition of the children has arisen from previous evil and wrong in the condition of the

parents. Evil, indeed, is the necessity, that children of tender years should be tasked beyond their strength to procure subsistance; but still more evil is the imposition of those burthens on industry, which require such inordinate labour for procuring a scanty supply of food. Wrong it is, that the parent should consign his boy or girl to cramping confinement, or else see them starve before his eyes; but still more wrong is the legal robbery, that tears away half the fruits of his own toil, and throws him upon the energies of his tender offspring to make good the deficiency.

Charles V. went into mourning, when the Pope was imprisoned by his own soldiers, and offered public prayers for the Pontiff's deliverance, which he could have effected in a moment, by issuing an order. The imperial hypocrite has had a host of imitators; there is no man, not wilfully blind, or hopelessly stupid, who does not know, that juvenile labour is a necessary and inevitable result of the great and inordinate pressure on the general industry of the country. Is it not then the wildest insolence of hypocrisy to lament the result, and, at the same time, uphold the system by which it is produced? When such inconsistency is ostentatiously displayed, the only doubt is, whether it should be despised as folly, or detested as wickedness. Enough has been said to expose the false pretences of one fashionable cry, we shall take future opportunities of examining some of the other charges brought against the manufacturing population.

THE POET.

Echo was erst a living nymph and warm,

With tears for woe, and sweet smiles to rejoice,
But hopeless love consumed her sentient forin,
And nothing left her, but a helpless voice.
Much like a ghost, if old belief were true,
Which cannot speak, 'till it is spoken to—
And so the Poet, smit with love of fame,

Must vanish soon from this forgetful earth,
And be a nothing, save a voice, a name,

Which lives, when other voices give it birth,—
Yet, after death, what will it be to me

If a dead mark, or living echo be.

HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

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OUR PORTRAIT GALLERY.

No. I.-DR. DALTON.

WITH AN ETCHING, FROM THE STATUE BY SIR FRANCIS CHANTREY.

We commence our Gallery with Dr. Dalton, and we do not know of any one more fitted to take the first place in a series, which is intended to comprehend all, who are distinguished, in the Northern Districts of England, for mental and moral worth. The " Prince of Philosophers" has gained the esteem and regard of men of every denomination; and, in the course of a long and honest life, has made many friends, without a single enemy.

The subject of our memoir was born in September, 1766, near Cockermouth, in Cumberland, and enjoyed but very limited opportunities of education. Under the care, however, of Mr. John Fletcher, a member of the Society of Friends, to which he himself belongs, he made such rapid progress, that, at the age of twelve, he opened for himself a school at Eaglesfield, and had several pupils, in physical, if not in mental stature, less juvenile than himself. Three years afterwards, having succeeded his brother, as assistant in the boarding school of a cousin in Kendal, he obtained access to the library of Mr. Góugh, a gentleman, who, though blind from infancy, was distinguished for very considerable scientific attainments, and for whom, to use his own words, " he read, wrote, and made calculations, and diagrams, and participated with him in the pleasure resulting from successful investigation." During this period also, he was a contributor to the Gentleman's and the Lady's Diary, and obtained two of the prizes given by the editors.

In 1793, he was appointed to the Professorship of Mechanics and Natural Philosophy, in the New College, Manchester; but, having relinquished that office at the end of six years, he divided his time between private pupils and his laboratory, (which forms part of the building occupied by the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society), and to the latter, at a little before eight in the morning, with but few intervals during many years, might he be seen proceeding, with a small lanthorn in his hand, to light his fire. His workshop was never very remarkable for its neatness, and the student of science in the present day might look in vain for the implements and means," by which he is accustomed to carry out his researches. Thus, with untiring perseverance, though with very limited resources, and amid many difficulties, did this now eminent man continue his pursuit after knowledge, and, from his volume of "Meteorological Observations and Essays," published in 1793, a work" containing the germs of most of the ideas which he has since expanded," to his great discovery of the Atomic Theory, in 1803, and his later writings and lectures, develop the workings of a truly philosophic mind.

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It is remarkable that discoveries, so purely theoretical, should have proved of such eminent practical utility. France and Germany