You must not enter upon a career of usefulness without expecting innumerable vexations and crosses to affect the details of any project or system you may undertake. And when the novelty of your purpose has somewhat worn off, and you have to meet with the honest opposition of other minds, as well as to contend against their vanity, their selfishness, and their unreasonableness, it requires a high and full source for your benevolence to flow from, if it would bear down these annoyances. Even when they cannot dry up the stream, or change its current, if you are
not watchful over yourself, they may make it flow more feebly. The very prospect of success is to some minds a great temptation to make them slacken their efforts. Throughout the course of our pursuit, we are never, perhaps, so prone to be weary and to repine, as when we begin to feel sure of ultimate success, but at the same time to perceive, that a long and definite period must elapse before the completion of our undertaking.
Against the many temptations that beset a man in such a career, I do not believe that any good feeling, which stands upon no other than mere human relations, will be found a sufficient support. No sentimental benevolence will do; nor even, at all times, a warm and earnest philanthropy: there must be the inexorable sense of duty arising from a man’s apprehension, if but in a feeble degree, of his relation towards God, as well as to his fellow man.
CHAPTER III.
Labour in Factories.
The two former chapters have been given to the consideration of the relation between the employer of labour and the labouring man, and to general reflections upon the duties arising from that relation. Let us now take a particular instance, the employment of labour in manufactures for example, and go through some of the more obvious points to which the master might in that case direct his attention beneficially.
1. The Mill.
It would seem an obvious thing enough, that when a man collects a number of his fellow-men together to work for him, it would be right to provide a sufficient supply of air for them.
But this does not appear to have been considered as an axiom; and, in truth, we cannot much wonder at this neglect, when we find that those who have to provide for the amusement of men, and who would be likely, therefore to consult the health and convenience of those whom they bring together, should sedulously shut out the pure air, as if they disliked letting anything in that did not pay for admission. In most grievances, the people aggrieved are very sensible at the time of the evil they are undergoing; which is not, however, the case with those who suffer from an impure atmosphere. They are, in general, almost unconscious of what they are enduring. This makes it the more desirable, in the case we are considering, that the manufacturer himself, or the government, or the community at large, should be alive to the mischief arising from want of ventilation in these crowded assemblages of men, and to the absolute necessity of providing remedies for it.
This will not be an inappropriate place for saying something about the non-interference principle. There is no doubt that interference
has often been most tyrannous and absurd, that our ancestors, for instance, sometimes interfered only to insist upon impossibilities, and that we may occasionally do the same. But, on the other hand, the let-alone principle proceeds upon the supposition, not only that every body knows his own interest best, or if not, that his freedom of action is of more importance than his acting wisely, which is often true; but it also goes on to assume that every body knows and will take just care of the welfare of others. Push either principle to any great length; and you will find yourself in the land of confusion and absurdity. In truth, I should seldom like to say anything about the wisdom, or the folly, of interference, until I knew exactly what it was about, and how far you intended to interfere. It is one of those matters in which it is especially desirable to keep in mind those maxims of prudence, respecting the application of general rules to moral questions, which Burke has handled so admirably. “Nothing universal,” he observes, “can be rationally affirmed on any moral, or any political subject. Pure metaphysical