Let us now introduce our readers to a legislative protection against frauds of a more dire and mysterious character, in the shape of an act passed in the sixth year of Edward VI., 'for stuffing of feather-beds, bolsters, mattresses, and cushions.' Our readers, we hope, will not suppose—as the words might lead them to infer—that these articles are to be stuffed with the act; on the contrary, it would be highly penal so to do. The chief provisions are: 'For the avoiding of the great deceipt used and practised in stuffing of feather-beds, bolsters, pillows, mattresses, cushions, and quilts—be it enacted, that no person or persons whatsoever shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer to be sold) any feather-bed, bolster, or pillow, except the same be stuffed with dry-pulled feathers, or clean down only, without mixing of scalded feathers, fen-down, thistle-down; sand, lime, gravel, unlawful or corrupt stuff, hair, or any other, upon pain of forfeiture,' &c. One would like to know what 'unlawful or corrupt stuff' is, and whether the corruptness be physical through putridity, or merely metaphysical and created, like the unlawfulness by statute. The act provides further, that after a certain day no person 'shall make (to the intent to sell, or offer, or put to sale) any quilt, mattress, or cushions, which shall be stuffed with any other stuff than feathers, wool, or flocks alone,' on pain of forfeiture.
But the most stringent enactments for the protection of the public against such wholesale deceptions appear to have been in the article of fustian; and perhaps the hidden adulterations that suggested the enactments, may be the reason why unsound reasonings and hollow speeches are called fustian. There is something mysteriously awful in the act of the eleventh year of Henry VII., called 'A remedy to avoid deceitful slights used upon fustians.' It begins thus:
'That whereas fustians brought from the parts beyond the sea unshorn into this realm, have been and should be the most profitable cloth for doublets and other wearing clothes greatly used among the common people of this realm, and longest have endured of anything that have come into the same realm from the said parts to that intent—for that the cause hath been that such fustians afore this time hath been truly wrought and shorn with the broad sheare, and with no other instruments or deceitful mean used upon the same. Now so it is, that divers persons, by subtlety and undue slights and means, have deceivably imagined and contrived instruments of iron, with which irons, in the most highest and secret places of their houses, they strike and draw the said irons on the said fustians unshorn—by means whereof they pluck off both the nap and cotton of the said fustians, and break commonly both the ground and threads in sunder; and after, by crafty sleeking, they make the same fustians to appear to the common people fine, whole, and sound; and also they raise up the cotton of such fustians, and then take a light candle, and set it on the fustian burning, which singeth and burneth away the cotton of the same fustian from the one end to the other down to the hard threads, instead of shearing; and after that put them in colour, and so subtlely dress them, that their false work cannot be espied, without it be workmen shearers of such fustian, or the wearers of the same.'
Many penalties and forfeitures are laid on the persons who so treacherously corrupt honest fustian. But one is apt to fear, that the accurate account given of the process may have induced some people to follow it, who would not have thought of doing so but for the instruction contained in the act for abolishing it.
Our manufacturing operatives have been justly censured for their occasional—and, to do them justice, it is but occasional—enmity to machinery. Sometimes it may be palliated, though not justified, by the hardship which is often, without doubt, suffered by those who have to seek a new occupation. We suspect, however, that the legislature is not entirely free from this kind of barbarous enmity. We are led to this supposition by finding, in the sixth year of Edward VI., an act 'for the putting down of gig-mills.' It sets out with the principle, that everything that deteriorates manufactured articles does evil, continuing: 'And forasmuch as in many parts of this realm is newly and lately devised, erected, builded, and used, certain mills called gig-mills, for the perching and burling of cloth, by reason whereof the true drapery of this realm is wonderfully impaired, and the cloth thereof deceitfully made by reason of the using of the said gig-mills'—and so provisions follow for their suppression. It is a general effect of machinery to fabricate goods less lasting than those which are handwrought, but with an accompanying reduction of price, which makes the machine produce by far the cheaper. We fear the legislature saw only the deterioration, and was not alive to the more than compensating facility of production.
VISIT TO THE ROYAL ITALIAN OPERA.
It is by the territorial division of labour that a country arrives most successfully at wealth and civilisation. Our hops are grown in Kent and Essex; Glasgow annually sends forth the engines of our steam fleets; Sunderland is the focus of our shipbuilding; Edinburgh, with her legion of professors, and her busy presses, is one vast academy. In short, each district does something peculiar to itself, while all avoid sending coal to Newcastle.
A large number of manufactures, particularly those of luxury, are peculiar to the metropolis, and one of the most prominent of this class is public amusement. Every season has its novelty, whether the opera of a great foreign composer, or the lectures of a literary lion; besides endless panoramas, dioramas, cosmoramas, and cycloramas, which bring home to John Bull the wonders of the habitable globe, and annihilate time and space for his delectation. We see the Paris of the Huguenots to the sound of Meyerbeer's blood-stirring trumpets; or gain companionship with Hogarth, Fielding, or Smollett as we listen to Thackeray; or, after paying our shilling in the Chinese Junk, are, to all intents and purposes, afloat in the Hoang Ho.