decision, Mr. Horner inserted this case, happening in November, and another which happened in December, in his Report for October, with this remark, for which he so far apologised in his next Report as to say (p.4,) that if he had been informed of the grounds of the decision of the magistrates, he would have given them the benefit of their publication in his report. While still in ignorance of the reasons for the judgment, he wrote as follows:—"Thus, in little more than six weeks, two men, in the prime of life, have lost their lives in my district from unfenced horizontal shafts, by the neglect of the owners of the factories to obey a clear enactment of the law, formed expressly for the purpose of preventing such fearful accidents, and by not adopting a simple and inexpensive precaution not exceeding a few shillings, viz.—the application of strap hooks, which in both instances would have been effective. In the proceedings against the owners of the factories, the magistrates, in the one case, setting the law aside, dismissed the complaint; in the other, they held Ten Pounds to be a sufficient vindication of the law, when a man's life was lost."—Report. October, 1854, p. 7.
Thus begging every question involved—the scope and bearing of the enactment, the neglect and sordid heartlessness of the employers, the violation of the law by some magistrates, and the estimate of the value of a man's life at ten pounds by others, Mr. Horner proceeded to act upon his own view with singular confidence. "In laying the result (of the Folson and Collins Case) before Lord Palmerston," says Mr. Horner in his Spring Report, "I added that, of the five magistrates on the bench, three were occupiers of large cotton factories in Oldham, viz.—Messrs. Worthington, E. A. Wright, and G. Barlow; that, 'in their factories, as well as in a large majority of the factories in my district,[1] there were numerous horizontal shafts, at various heights from the floor, that were not securely fenced, and that
- ↑ The italics are Mr. Horner's own.
