The pamphlet in question is an essay written, as we are told in an introduction, for the Westminster Review, and declined on account of its manner of treatment. When we say that a part of its manner is to accuse this journal of “unscrupulous statements, insolence, arrogance, and cant,” and that amidst much abuse of “Mr. Dickens or his contributor”—“his partner in the disgrace,” another part of its manner is to abuse Mr. Dickens personally for “conceit, insolence, and wilful one-sidedness,” it will be seen that the editor of the Review exercised the discretion of a gentleman. We regret very much indeed that the National (or Lancashire) Association has been less discreet, and, by issuing the paper as a pamphlet at its own expense, has been less friendly to the lady than the lady wished to be to them. We are reluctantly compelled to show, that both in tone and argument Miss Martineau’s pamphlet, published by the Lancashire Association to Prevent the Fencing of Machinery, is—we will not forget her claims upon our forbearance, and we will say—a mistake.
And first, as to the tone. Using in her reply the manner pointed out by us, Miss Martineau says, that certain articles in the eleventh volume of this journal[A] put forward inaccurate statements, “in a temper and by language which convey their own condemnation.” But, lest it should be thought that what was wrong in us cannot be quite right in herself, Miss Martineau adds, on the same page, “I like courtesy as well as anybody can do; but when vicious legislation and social oppression are upheld by men in high places, the vindication of principle, and exposure of the mischief, must come before consideration of private feeling.” Now, confessing for a moment our defect of temper, might we not say, very fairly, that a writer who believes in his heart that resistance to a given law dooms large numbers of men to mutilation, and not few to horrible deaths, may honestly speak with some indignation of the resistance by which those deaths are produced; and that the same right to be angry is not equally possessed by an advocate who argues that the deaths cannot be helped, and that nobody has a right to meddle specially in any way with a mill-owner’s trade? But if any dispassionate reader of the articles to which Miss Martineau refers should pass from them to the personal invective with which they are met, he will not fail to perceive that we attacked only what we held to be an evil course of opposition to a necessary law, and abided firmly by the leading features of the case, apart from any personal consideration. We spoke plainly, as the case required, and with the earnest feeling that the case called forth; but it will be found, on reference, that in not one of these articles was an attack made upon any person whomsoever; that the chairman of the National Association was not named; that when cases of accident were necessarily cited, it was enough for us to say “a certain mill,” because we spoke of principles and not of persons. It will be found, also, that we took pains to disconnect our plain speaking upon one shortcoming; from a general disparagement of mill-owners; and that we went quite out of our way to occupy no inconsiderable part of these papers with a cordial reminder of the excellent enterprises and fine spirit that belonged to chieftains of the cotton class. Miss Martineau says for herself, that “in a matter of political morality so vital as this, there must be no compromise and no mistake.” We felt so too; but also felt that it would be a great mistake and a great compromise of principle, to intrude personalities on the discussion of it.
The history of the present pamphlet, given by its author in a letter to the “Association of Factory Occupiers,” is, that wishing to controvert the views of Mr. Horner, the Factory Inspector, she mentioned her desire to obtain the facts on both sides of the question “to a member of your Association, who visited me soon after;” and we cannot help feeling, that for the facts on both sides, which are so clearly only the statements on one side, and (we hope for her sake) for the temper too, the writer is indebted to her faith in the opinions of her friend. She thinks also, that the notes of a barrister who edited the Factory Act show “that it was high time the passionate advocates of meddling legislation should be met by opponents of such legislation who are, by position, likely to be at once dispassionate and disinterested.” To ensure this desirable result, a pamphlet written in a passion, is sent to be published and circulated by the Association directly engaged in maintaining one side of the matter, and composed of the persons most distinctly interested in its issue.
Vexed at the blindness of the barrister-at-law, who is as blind as ourselves, Miss Martineau goes on to say, in her prefatory letter, “What can instigate any lawyer, who cannot be supposed an interested party, to write such a preface as Mr. Tapping’s, it is difficult to imagine. On opening it, my eye falls at once on a false statement, which ought to destroy all the authority of the rest.” What is the “false statement” of Mr. Tapping? Mr. Tapping wrote that the manufacturers have instituted the National Association of Factory Occupiers, for the special purpose of raising a fund for defraying thereout all fines for not fencing, which may be inflicted upon members.... “This statement,” adds Miss Martineau, “is dated October second, eighteen hundred and fifty-five; whereas the Special Report of your Association, dated July, expressly declares that the Association will pay no penalties awarded under Factory Acts.” Miss Martineau’s difficulty would have vanished had she known the truth; which is this:—It was announced distinctly, by the founders of the Association, so long ago as the March previous, that they would raise money to pay penalties; and it was only when they were made conscious of the danger of the ground so taken, that they forestalled the period of an annual report, and printed the so-called Special Report, in which they took pains to fence themselves off against legal accident. This report was their own stroke of policy, printed for themselves, and to be had only from their office. It was not advertised nor published; it was sent to members—it was there to use. As soon as it came into our hands, through a private source, we made our comments on it; but the date of its being written, though it has July on the cover, is the seventh of August. After it was written, it had to be printed, and it could then only have been by some unlikely chance that any tidings of it could have reached a barrister in London by the second of October. The public reports of the proceedings connected with the formation of the Association had informed him that there was a proposition to pay penalties incurred by occupiers who refused to fence. There was no other source of information open to him.
This point is of importance to us, and we for the second time place it beyond question that, before the appearance of the Special Report, the Association did combine to pay penalties, in obedience to the recommendation of a body of mill-owners who had gone to London with the hope of getting the Factory Act into discredit with the government. The recommendation was read at the meeting[B] in these distinct terms: “The deputation are of opinion, that a fund of not less than five thousand pounds should be immediately raised; and they suggest that all cases of prosecution which the committee of management are of opinion can be legitimately dealt with by the Association, shall be defended by, and the penalties or damages paid out of, the funds of the Association.” Whereupon it was moved, seconded, and unanimously resolved:
“That the recommendation in the report, to raise immediately a sum of not less than £5,000 be immediately carried into execution, and that an additional contribution of one shilling per nominal horse-power from each mill-occupier (making a total of two shillings) be at once called for, to enable the committee to carry out the recommendation to defend, at the cost of the Association, all cases of prosecution which they may consider fairly to come within the sphere of the Association.”[C]
We have only to add, that the report including these resolutions, besides receiving a wide notoriety through the newspapers, was printed and circulated by the Association itself, and that a copy of it was obtained by us before we wrote upon the subject. There can be no doubt, then, under what impressions the first members of the Association joined it, and of the accusation under which it justly lay until it thought best publicly to withdraw from a dangerous position.
On this same point, Miss Martineau is of opinion that “Mr. Dickens had better consider, for the sake of his own peace of mind, as well as the good of his neighbours, how to qualify himself for his enterprise before he takes up his next task of reform. If he must give the first place to his idealism and sensibilities, let him confine himself to fiction; and if he will put himself forward as a social reformer, let him do the only honest thing,—study both sides of the question he takes up. How far he is from having done this in the present case, a short, but not unimportant statement may show. He says, by his own pen, or his contributor’s [let us say, then, his contributor’s] ‘But the factory inspectors will proceed for penalties? Certainly they will; and then, if these gentlemen be members of the National Association of Factory Occupiers, they will have their case defended for them and their fine immediately paid.’ Yet while the writer declares his information to be drawn from the papers of the Association, he ignores the following conspicuous passages from their First Report”—the retractation then being quoted.
Now, setting aside the likelihood or unlikelihood of Mr. Dickens, to secure his peace of mind, taking ghostly advice from Miss Martineau, there is no doubt that in the said First Report the retractation was conspicuous, and that moreover, it was meant to be conspicuous; but we can hardly think it so conspicuous as to have been visible, not merely before it was visible, but, as we firmly believe, even before it was so much as conceived. On the same line with the page 605 of this journal, upon which we are lectured, are inscribed the words “Household Words, July 28, 1855.” The number dated on that day was, in the usual manner, published three days previously, and issued in Manchester on the twenty-sixth of July, but the report which we failed to do the honest thing by citing was not written—as we find by the date against the chairman’s signature—until the seventh of August! When it reached us in September we at once (in our two hundred and eighty-fifth number) made public its purport; but we did not say what we may now say, namely, that there came with it a remark which we believe to be true, and which dates certainly go far to justify: that the Special Report—a thing not contemplated in the rules—was actually suggested by our comments,—that our journal, containing a wide publication of the illegal position of the recusant mill-owners, having reached Manchester on the twenty-sixth of July, was considered by the committee of the Association to necessitate retreat to safer ground by means of a Special Report, and that by the seventh of August, the report was completed and signed; after which, it has been further suggested to us, that July was put upon the cover, not without a hope that somebody might be misled into believing that it had really been produced several weeks sooner than it was. Be that as it may, we should not have supposed that the Association, for the sake of passing a so easily detected deception on the public, would have imperilled the reputation of an honourable lady by leaving uncorrected in her pamphlet a flagrant error, of which it could by no conceivable chance have been ignorant, and by suffering it to go forth, headed in small capitals, Mis-statements in Household Words.
We turn with sorrow to the other contents of the pamphlet. As the pamphlet of the Association we are bound to show why it can only damage the cause of the Association with the government and with the public; we would have wholly spared the writer our present exposure of her mistake, if we could.