salary of 10007. a year. The expense of his own experiment was wholly his own. The Company received their dividends, dispersed their candles, took in stock, did all the business of a thriving firm, but had no hand, until very recently, in the noble work set on foot within their walls.

When at length the extent, the influence, and the success of Mr. Wilson's schemes began to be known to the company, there was displayed a genuine appreciation of the conduct of the manager. Drawn together originally, of course, by the mere prospect of goodly returns for capital invested, they found cause to acknowledge that there were other things worthy of their care. The Directors began by nominating a Committee for full inquiry, and having received a Report warmly commending all that had been done, they called a meeting which opens out a new and noble scene in commercial life. The Directors now resolved with cordial unanimity to adopt the whole system introduced by Mr. Wilson, to reimburse him the money which he had laid out without any thought or idea of repayment, and to take upon themselves for the future the charge of the various schemes at the cost of some 12007. a year. Let us hope that the spirit with which the resolutions were proposed may be caught by other companies, and that, without intending any facetious allusion to the article manufactured by the firm, it may light, in Latimer's words, such a fire in England as shall never be quenched. Mr. Conybeare (a member of the inquiring Committee), in proposing that 9007. a year should be expended on the schools, expressed himself as follows:

It seems to me as if by having done so I had already in some measure relieved myself of a burden which has long been weighing upon me. I will explain how this is. Some eighteen months since a gentleman who has given good evidence of his earnest wish to better and raise the working classes, was talking to me of the various schools existing in the neighbourhood of Vauxhall; after speaking of some others he mentioned those connected with our Factory as among the best-managed in the neighbourhood, and spoke in terms of the highest commendation of our Company for the great attention we paid to the education and moral welfare of our workpeople. He said our Company had achieved great success, but that we had deserved success, and any further success that might attend an undertaking so conducted. Of course, I immediately disclaimed, on behalf of the Company, all credit for what was no work of ours, and at the same time explained who it was that had organised and supported those schools. Need I tell you that it pained me to make such an explanation, and that it was with feelings of shame that I admitted that as a Company we did not as yet morally merit the success we had attained?

6

Speaking as a Director, I would impress upon you my own firm

conviction

conviction that the school system which we, as Directors, recommend is highly conducive to the pecuniary success of our business. The good effects of that system permeate and pervade the entire working of the factories. Not long since I took a friend, himself a manufacturer on the largest scale, over our factories. The candle-making machinery, ingenious as it is, did not so much elicit his admiration. But I shall not soon forget his words and looks on entering our Night-light factory, where the large proportion of our child-labour is employed: as he looked on the healthy and happy faces and clean and tidy dress of our girls, and watched their intelligent and smiling faces as (evidently amused at our inspection of their work) they looked up from the tasks which busied their rapid-glancing fingers, he exclaimed, "I never even imagined that factory labour could present a scene so cheerful and so pleasing." But suppose that the pecuniary advantage to which I have alluded as attending our moral training is purely visionary, and that the measures I recommend involve a sheer outlay, an actual deduction of your annual gains. What then? Shall it be told in this Christian land, at a time too when social questions, and particularly the relation of capital and labour, are attracting among all nations an attention hitherto unprecedented-shall it, I ask, be told at such a time of the shareholders of a great and successful English Company, that they grudged to spare a few drops from their brimming chalice for the maintenance of a system such as your Managing Director has energetically carried out ready to your hand? Which

of us does not know too well the great evil and intense temptations to which the uncared-for children of our English factories are necessarily exposed when herded together in hot contaminating crowds? Shall we not in our factories obviate this evil by increasing, so far as we may by education, the average moral strength of those by whose toils we profit? Shall we not strive earnestly to purify the atmosphere in which they work by shutting out, or at least mitigating, the temptations and occasions of evil which the average moral strength of factory children is found incapable of resisting? It is said-you must have frequently heard it-that Joint Stock Companies have no conscience. Let this Company prove itself an exception to any such rule, by acting towards its factory "hands," as not forgetting that those "hands" have human hearts and immortal souls.'

In a similar strain Mr. Blackmore, in proposing that all the previous expenses incurred in providing the schools and religious advantages for the workpeople should be repaid, declared that the dividends which flowed into their pockets depended on their having a well-cared-for set of operatives.

'But,' he added, we have also a far higher motive than this held out to us. We have the prospect of really carrying out in practice what is so much spoken of in theory, the raising of the social condition of the working classes, and the effecting of a happy union between the employer and the employed. With such motives before us, let us

not

Let us

not dole out our money in a grudging or niggardly manner. give the whole amount, and along with it our hearty thanks and the expression of our deep obligation.'

In such a spirit did the Company propose to act. It only remains for us to say that Mr. Wilson, though prepared to let future expenses be undertaken by the Company, at once declined receiving back into his own pocket one farthing that he had laid out; and when the money was pressed upon him anew by an unanimous meeting of the Proprietary, he only received it on the distinct condition that the whole sum should be expended on the erection of a suitable chapel within the walls of the factory, in lieu of that which he had rented hitherto without.

We shall be borne out in saying that such scenes as these ennoble trade. They make our merchants 'princes' in a double sense; nor can we quit them without adding one more quotation from Mr. Wilson's letter.

In nine cases out of ten,' he says, 'a manufacturer attending to other things instead of his factory, seems to be giving up a very high position, for in reality a less high, though it may be a more showy one. The best that a clever and energetic man can expect from going into "society," or from getting into Parliament, is a certain amount of usefulness and happiness; but he has already under his feet, in his factory, a mine of untold usefulness and happiness to others and to himself -difficult enough to open, no doubt, and requiring perhaps a good deal of apparently profitless digging at first, but containing veins of such richness as, when once struck, to repay ten times over any exertions it may cost to reach them. In "society" and in Parliament a man has to deal with minds as much formed, as little pliable as his own; so that, without extraordinary power, it is not much that he can hope to do in the way of influencing them. But in the factory he needs no such powers. His mere position disposes every mind in it to form itself upon his, and the extent of his influence is bounded only by the limit he may himself choose to put to the trouble he will take to acquire it. I think manufacturers getting into Parliament, and then asking for education bills, are acting as if fathers of families were to devote themselves to parish business, and use the power thus acquired to procure the creation of a lot of additional beadles to go and manage their families for them in their absence.'

We need not, we believe, inform any person interested in the progress of Practical Chemistry that sundry great recent improvements in the Stereac Candle, as it is called, are due to the diligent labours of the Belmont co-managers in the Laboratory attached to that establishment. True is the saying, that they who have most work find most time at their command. There can be little doubt that these young managers' success in the

VOL. XCII. NO. CLXXXIII.

C

the attempt to elevate and purify the moral habits of their artisans will lead to similar efforts elsewhere, and how reasonable will be the joy and gratitude of the Nation should such examples indeed spread largely-but especially if they could be followed out amidst the great provincial conglomerations of factory labour-in such Babylons of glass and gas as Manchester, Glasgow, and Leeds!* It is, we must repeat, certain that many master-manufacturers, however wisely and benevolently disposed, could not in their own persons do for their people what the Messrs. Wilson have undertaken at Belmont-but one thing they can do and that no trifle. In the cost of any great establishment of this class, the addition of a chaplain can be no serious item and indeed we are quite satisfied that the services of such a functionary would always be, as at Belmont, speedily and abundantly overpaid in the increased order, decorum, and honest diligence of the workers.

ART. II.-Life and Letters of Joseph Story, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and Dane Professor of Law at Harvard University. Edited by his Son, W. W. Story. 8vo., 2 vols. Boston, 1852.

TWO

WO thick and tall closely printed volumes are somewhat too much for the Life and Letters of Mr. Justice Story. He was not a good letter-writer :—indeed it seems strange that a man so light of heart and so fluent in speech, of feelings so warm and yet so gentle-with so much learning, and seeing so many men and things within his own, perhaps not very extensive, circle— should have produced letters so little interesting in matter or manner. He had no romance in his character, and no adventure in his life-happily, no doubt, for himself. From school to college-from college to a lawyer's office-from the office to the Bar-and thence in succession to the State-Legislature, to Congress, to the Bench, and last, not least, to the Lecture-room-he passed without break, check, or reverse-beloved, admired, latterly venerated—to a peaceful end. One tour to the Falls is recorded -one voyage to England contemplated, sighed for, and aban

*It is understood that Price's Candle Company themselves are about to form in Lancashire a new establishment still more extensive than that at Vauxhal!. Whether one of the Wilson family is to be at the head of it we have not heard-but if that should be the case, we are pretty sure the experiment' will be tried over again, in spite of many difficulties unknown to Belmont. We shall wait the result with anxiety

-not without hope.

6

doned:

doned a less locomotive man in such a station has hardly ever come under our notice. Such a life leaves little for narrative; but we have no doubt the story might have contained more details of real interest, if the author had ventured on more inward and personal topics, and the book certainly might have been improved by vigorous excision. More than half the letters-those merely of compliment or on formal occasions; all the dedicatory addresses of his numerous works, to be found of course in them; long extracts from addresses and reports which are printed in his Miscellaneous Writings, and nearly all his poetry should have been omitted; and we might well have been spared the perpetually recurring accounts of what were the most important cases argued before him in Court in this or that Term ; to lawyers these afford but insufficient information, and to the general reader they are absolutely useless.

But we must not be misunderstood. We do not impute to the author mere clumsy book-making-he has been misled by filial affection-by professional and patriotic feelings; but in all three respects he had indeed much to be proud of. His father was an honest and a most amiable man, a very accomplished lawyer, an excellent judge, a remarkably successful teacher of the law, and he ranks very high amongst the jurists of this, perhaps we may say, of any age.

Our readers will not be surprised at our allotting some pages to one whom we thus characterise, and a sketch of the distinguished American's career will give us an opportunity of saying a few words on some questions of present interest to ourselves.

Joseph Story was born in 1779 at Marblehead, in the county of Essex, Massachusetts, a lonely and rather dismal fishing village breasting the Atlantic. He was one of a numerous family, the children of a physician-one who had figured as an Indian in the noted tea-raid at Boston, who served under Washington as an army surgeon, a very decided republican in politics, and who, in the party divisions which succeeded Washington's administration, sided with Jefferson against John Adams. His will contains a clause, which dying, as he did, in somewhat narrow circumstances, his grandson cites with becoming pride:

I request my executrix (his wife) not to distress the poor, who may owe me at my decease-but to receive their debts as they may be able to pay, in ever so small a sum.'

At an early age Joseph was sent to the Marblehead Academywhich had, we presume, nearly a monopoly of the education of the future hopes of this retired hamlet, for girls and boys were educated there together-and remaining there till he was fifteen,

c 2

when