he soon becomes vicious, degraded, reck-reads so miserably, that we fain would hope the account overdrawn.

98

the body bent in a semi-circular form, in order | low such examples, especially as it can be to stiffen the arch. Large lumps of coal are proved to the able-bodied husband and then placed on the neck, and she then commen- father that there is no necessity for him to ces her journey with her burden to the pit bottom, lose anything by a change so beneficial to first hanging her lamp to the cloth crossing her head.'-Report, p. 92.

This one journey is mounting a succession of ladders, each eighteen feet high, from mainroad to mainroad, till she comes to the pit bottom, where her load is to be cast. The height ascended and the distance of the road, added together, exceed the height of St. Paul's; and it not unfrequently happens that the tugs break, and the load falls on those females who are to follow.

his wife and children.

The Duke of Buccleuch's manager, Mr. James Wright, says:

'I feel confident that the exclusion of females will advantage the collier in a physical point of view, and that it will force the alteration of the economy of the mines. Owners will be compelled to alter their system. They will ventilate better, make better roads, and so change the system as to enable men who now work only three or four days a-week to discover their own interest in regularly employing themselves. Since young children and females have been excluded from his Grace's mines, we have never had occasion to increase the price of coal.'

'Men labour here, on an average, from eleven to twelve days in the fortnight; whereas, when they depended on their wives and children, they rarely wrought nine. Colliers are now stationary: the women themselves are opposed to moving since they have felt the benefit of home."

But we will not multiply these spectacles of human misery and degradation; and to whom can they be traced? Is the contractor alone in fault is the proprietor In Mr. Ramsay of Barnton's mines woscatheless? Or shall we blame the parents men and very young children have, for the and relations, by whose avarice and impro-last four years, been excluded. See the vidence, according to Mr. Sub-commission- results :er Scriven (p. 74. App. I.) in almost every instance, these females are thus subjected to moral and physical evils of the worst kind? On both sides the guilt is greatvery great-but surely vastly greater in him who has not even the excuse of poverty for receiving the thirty pieces of silver.'-App. I., p. 400. The example of discontinuing this hateful practice has, however, been set in what we must consider as the very worst district. No sooner did the abomination come to the knowledge of the Duke of Buccleuch than his grace commanded its utter abolition in all his collieries; and the same course was immediately followed by the family of Dundas of Arniston, and others of his neighbours :

Until the last eight months,' says William Hunter, overman in a colliery at Arniston, women and lassies were wrought below in these works, when Mr. Alexander Moxton, our manager, issued an order to exclude them from going below, having some months prior given intimation of the same. Women always did the lifting or heavy part of the work, and neither they nor the children were treated like human beings; nor are they where they are employed. Females submit to work in places where no man nor even lad could be got to labour in: they work in bad roads up to their knees in water, in a posture nearly double: they are below till the last hour of pregnancy: they have swelled ancles and haunches, and are prematurely brought to the grave, or, what is worse, a lingering existence. Many of the daughters of miners are now at respectable service. I have two who are in families at Leith, and who are much delighted with the change.'-Ibid. p. 94.

We might quote abundance more to the like effect: several witnesses dwell in a very touching manner on the consequences of the mother and elder daughters of a family being in the pit, while the infants are surrendered to strange hands. What can be looked for under such circumstances as to early education? It would be a mockery But while there is to use the term at all. a general concurrence as to the extent of the mischief, and the possibility of stopping it, some apparently well-disposed managers urge the necessity of proceeding gradually. A warning, they say, of perhaps two years must be given, in order that families may prepare for a change in many of their arrangements, and especially that young girls may have time to make some preparation for entering on duties and services of a new description. Others, again, dwell on the difficulties arising from the obstinate self-will and prejudice of the collier-clan on this subject. For example, Mr. Wilson of Bantaskine, a proprietor and manager,

says:

'There is no power at present existing in the masters to prevent children being carried down. Those who attempt the improvement of miners need much patience: long-rooted neglect has No wonder! And we trust many more rendered them excessively clannish, and they proprietors will now be encouraged to fol-unite in secret to discomfit any proposed new ar

rangement. They hold secret conclaves in mines, and make rules and regulations which are injurious and absurd.'-App. I., p. 400.

We have cited all the districts in Great Britain that employ women in mines. The rest, amounting to fifteen,' do not permit this degradation; while Ireland is distinhateful characteristic, but also for not emguished not only by the absence of this ploying children at all :

We should have thought that what had been done by one proprietor might have seemed feasible to another. But it must be remembered that many of the mines are owned by persons of moderate, and perI visited the five principal establishments haps encumbered estate; and when the at-(in the county of Kilkenny and in Queen's tempt has been made by the less rich pro- County,) and found that no children or females prietor to exclude children under a certain of any age, and but very few young persons age and females from the mine, he has been were employed. I inspected about a dozen of the in peril of losing his best workmen.' (App.) different shafts worked by contractors, and found I., p. 400.) Hence the eagerness of Mr. none but men employed: indeed, I was informed that none but strong, Wilson and others that this wholesome of any use in the pits, the labour being severe. able young men would be measure should be initiated by government, I did not see any apparently under eighteen and made compulsory on all-so precluding years of age. Even the hurriers were strong the possibility of the collier's finding ano-young men who go along the narrow low pas ther slave-market whither to transport him-sages of seldom more than three feet, the body self with his wife and children when his stretched out: they draw the sledges on which own has dared to denounce his traffic in their Wooden boxes containing coals are placed, by a flesh and blood.

We may here again cite the respectable manager of the Duke of Buccleuch's collieries :

girdle round the loins, and a long chain fastened to the sledge going between their legs. It was matter of wonderment to me how these "hurriers," many of whom were stout men, upwards of six feet high, could manage to get along these very narrow passages at such a rate as they do, considering the excessive labour and difficulty I myself found in proceeding along about 130 yards in each of the pits: in many places there was just room for me to crawl through.'-App. I., p. 872.

'I would be against the interference of legislature in any case but where it is absolutely necessary, but here I conceive it to be their imperative duty. If a measure were passed enacting that no females were to be employed in our pits at all, no boys allowed to go down under twelve years of age, and only then if they can both It would be unfair if we were to omit, read and write-in all cases the work limited however, the reasons advanced in favour of each day to ten hours-if such a measure were

to pass, I do not know a greater boon that could letting children at a very young age debe conferred, not only on the mining population, scend into the mines. They are briefly but on the proprietors of Scotland. The latter these:-1. That in many mines the seams have a deep interest in the matter, and many of are too thin to be worked by any but very them are willing to do everything in their pow-young boys. 2. That unless sent down er to ameliorate the condition of the collier po- very young a boy could not learn how to pulation on their properties; but others are in- work. different, and however much individuals may 3. That many persons could not do as individuals, no measure can be effectual support the children unless this were alwhich does not extend over the whole.'-App. lowed. 4. That accidents are so frequent I., p. 407. as to make it anything but rare for a wife and a mother to become a widow, and

The evidence of Sir George Grant Sut- therefore wholly dependent on her chiltie, Bart., is equally forcible :

dren's exertions for subsistence: to prevent such from availing themselves of them 'I have no control over the colliers in my em- would be to pass a sentence of absolute ployment. I beg leave to state to you that the starvation :-for instance, in one small vilemployment of women in the mines of Scot-lage (Banton in Scotland) there are forty land is one of the reasons which tend to depre- widows kept from applying to the Kirk ciate the character and habits of the collier po- Session by the earnings of their children. pulation, and that to remedy this evil a legislalive enactment is required.'-App. I., p. 470. (App. I., p. 486.) 5. That at present there are twelve years of boys' labour-supposing them to enter at eight and not to become hewers till they be twenty years of age. If you forbid the entrance into the mine till the boy is ten years old, there will only be ten years of boys' labour. The effect will be tantamount to diminishing the number of boys, so that where twelve used

He adds, that though the gains of the colliers are double that of the agricultural population, yet their comforts are less, as indicated by their houses-for the wife is absent and frequently the fathers remain idle the greater part of the week, while the mothers and the children are in the pit.

to find employment only ten would now do so.

The reader must judge of the weight of the above arguments, which afford a fine scope for the ingenuity of the expediencymonger and the casuist, as to whether the displacement of capital, and therefore of labour, might not lead to greater misery than that which is sought to be avoided:whether the shutting-up the small-seamed collieries, which are often the best coaland which, or some of them, can only be wrought by very young creatures-would not enhance the price of a commodity, on the due supply of which, it may be readily shown, the life of the community at large hinges more entirely than on anything save food. In a word, a fine mesh of tangled argument may be spun by any logical head imbued with Paley's principle of the greatest happiness to the greatest number' -a principle, by the way, which to see in its details demands an omniscient being, and to carry out an almighty one. We leave all this to the reader, who, to use another phrase of Paley's, can afford to keep a conscience.'

We proceed to another point. The influence of man on his fellow-men may or may not be kindly; but that of the physical circumstances which surround the miner is quite appalling; and even through the stiff and bald detail of the Sub-commissioners there are touches of reality which transcend all imagination. The life of a collier,' says one of these gentlemen, is of great danger both for man and child-a collier is never safe after he is swung off to be let down the pit.' He is in danger, in the first place, from fire in its most frightful form, assuming a character which the sublime language of Milton can scarcely depict

some of the miners were swinging down into the pit: the force of the wind blew them back into the air. One or two fell on the bank, and were saved; but the rest were again precipitated into the shaft.

The author of the History of Fossil Fuel' has given a minute account of a catastrophe, of which the main points are the following.

In the forenoon of the 25th May, 1812, 121 men were in the Felling Colliery, when a terrible explosion was heard; a slight earthquake was felt half a mile round; a cloud of dust rose high into the air, and, borne away by a strong west wind, fell in thick showers at the distance of a mile and a half, causing a darkness like twilight over the village of Heworth.

As soon as the explosion was heard, a crowd of the relations of the colliers rushed to the pit. The men worked the 'gin' with astonishing expedition, and, letting down the rope, rescued 32 of persons, whom three (boys) died in a few hours. An eye-witness, the Rev. M. Hodgson, says that the shrieks, wringing of hands, and howling were indescribable: they who had their friends restored to them seemed to suffer as much from excess of joy as they had lately done by grief. But these were the few. Several attempts were made to rescue those who did not appear: within a few hours eight or nine bold men descended into the pit-bottom, but found that the entrance into the workings, or galleries, was impeded by an upright column of smoke, which convinced them that the mine was on fire. It was in vain that the 'viewers' assured the people that all hope was at an end; and that the only thing left was to extinguish the ignited coals by closing up the mine itself. Each proposition to this effect was met with yells of Murder!' from the kindred, followed by symptoms of deterFloods and whirlwinds of tempestuous fire.' mined resistance. Two or three days elapsed, while the widows and orphans. When the ventilation of a colliery has been al- never ceased to hover about the pit-mouth lowed to become bad, a quantity of carburet- in the hope to hear some cry for succour― ted hydrogen gas accumulates in the 'wastes,' but all silent as death; and at length the and ignites on the first approach of any light, shaft was permitted to be hermetically save the blessed Davy-lamp: the whole closed. It was re-opened on the Sth of mine is instantly filled with terrific flashes July, on which day a great concourse asof lightning, the expanding fluid driving be- sembled to witness this service of danger fore it a roaring whirlwind of flaming air, -some curious only, but the greater part which tears up everything-scorching some came, with streaming eyes and broken to a cinder, burying others under enormous hearts, to seek a father, a son, or husband rocks and fragments shaken from the roofs-constables were appointed to keep off and passages--and then, thundering up the shaft, wastes its volcanic fury in a thick discharge of dust, stones, and the mangled limbs of men and horses. One of these explosions took place at the moment that

the crowd-and two surgeons were on the spot, in case of accidents. Eight men at a time descended, who remained four hours in, and eight hours out of the mine. When the first shift of men came up, a message

was sent for coffins; those which had been | manity part out of the question as a trifle, prepared were sent in cart-loads through we may be allowed to express a little surthe village of Low-Felling. As soon as prise at the inconsistency of expending the cart was seen, the women rushed out of 150,000l. in sinking a shaft, paying enortheir houses with shrieks which were heard mous sums for machinery, and the furto a great distance. The bodies were found nishing and draining a mine—and though most of them marked by fire-some fully aware that the whole may be blown to scorched, and dry as mummies. In one pieces if a trap-door be left open five minplace twenty were crammed in ghastly con- utes'-yet confiding that risk to the care fusion-some torn to pieces-while others and good sense of children aged from five appeared unscathed, and in attitude as if to seven years!!—(See Report, p. 147.) overpowered by sleep. It was only by some article of clothing-a shoe-or by some token, as a tobacco-box-that many friends could recognise the corpse. A neat pyramid, nine feet high, bearing the names and ages of eighty-nine sufferers, is placed over one huge grave in Heworth chapelyard.