their objects are, when, perhaps, our readers will perceive more clearly than Mr. Horner seems to do, the difference between testing a law, in order to its amendment on a matter of the deepest and broadest principle, and refusing obedience to it. A company of brigands organising a life of plunder in the Midland Counties is about as probable an incident as an association of manufacturers banded together to defy the law. In the last half-yearly Report of the Inspectors (June 1st, 1855), they draw attention to "the following remarkable admonition:—' The deputation (of millowners and occupiers) beg to caution the trade against the adoption of any compromise, whether of hooks or otherwise.' It thus appears," say the Inspectors, still without either perceiving the object of the Association to be the testing of the law, or noticing the difference of opinion about the efficacy of hooks, "that an association of mill-occupiers, formed at Manchester, are doing their utmost to prevent others throughout the United Kingdom from adopting precautions, &c." These gentlemen seem really to suppose that the objection of the manufacturers is to "precautions" against accidents, and not to indefensible prosecutions, and a meddling legislation which at once encroaches upon the liberties of the citizens, and tends to aggravate the very mischiefs it assumes to preclude.
The leading facts of the prosecutions which originated the National Association of Factory Occupiers, and brought on the decisive collision between the Inspectors and the manufacturers, are these:—In November, 1854, a man was killed at the factory of Messrs. Folson and Collins, of Oldham, by being caught up by a strap lapping round the shaft overhead. The Sub-inspector, Mr. Graham, laid an information against the employers; and the complaint was heard at Oldham Petty Sessions before five magistrates. The chairman was the Rev. T. S. Mills; and the others were Messrs. Piatt, Worthington, Wright, and Barlow. After retiring to consult, the magistrates dismissed the complaint. "Without furnishing himself with the grounds of the
