It can hardly be necessary to offer any excuse for the commonplace aspect of the incidents of the story. The justification of the narrative lies in the one particular that an all-important principle is involved in it. Every reader will here think of ship-money. We need, therefore, say nothing about it,—at least, more than this. If it should flit across anybody's mind that we are making much ado about tiresome and trivial matters, let him then think of ship-money, and he will read to the end.
It is a very small department of factory legislation that we are going to speak of. The great subjects of hours of labour and wages do not concern us here; nor does the general heading of the security of machinery, though Lord Palmerston and the Factory Inspectors mislead the public, and, perhaps, themselves into thinking that it does. The one point on which the existing controversy proceeds is not the securing the entire machinery in factories, but only horizontal shafts; and not all horizontal shafts, but only those which are, at least, seven feet from the ground. Upon this one point a story has now to be told, on the result of which must depend a long train of consequences, not only to the manufacturing interest (that is, to several millions of our people), but to the liberties of the whole nation. The question is of persistence in a wrong principle of legislation, or return to a right one.
The provisions of the Factory Acts (of 1833 and 1844) for the protection of the factory population from accidents by machinery, were not enforced for nine years. In 1853, the Factory Inspectors brought under the notice of the Secretary of State the "enormous amount" of accidents caused by contact with machinery, in comparison with other accidents among factory operatives. The whole number of accidents from machinery, in three years, was reported to be 11,716, of which 3,434 were of a serious character. The serious ones are all that require any notice, as the others are of so slight a nature that they would not be
