Paintings by Winterhalter
PRINCE ALBERT AND QUEEN VICTORIA AT THE TIME OF THEIR MARRIAGE
Then, because the Act spoke of the factory or the mill, and not of the mine, they took the little children and dropped them into the coal-pit. When the boy or the girl was six years of age—six! think of it—they took the little thing and put it in a dark passage, underground, with instructions to open and shut a door in order to let the trucks come and go. All day long—for twelve hours—that innocent infant was kept in the dark opening and shutting the doors. They worked from four in the morning till four in the evening; when they were taken up they were stupid, and cared for nothing but to sleep. When they grew older they pushed the trucks with their heads; when they grew older still the lads became hewers of coal: the girls—now women—continued to push the trucks with their heads or to drag them, clad in nothing but a pair of short trousers. This was done in a Christian country which boasted of having abolished slavery. Observe that there was no chance for these children ever to learn anything, ever to do anything, except to continue all their lives in the coal-pit; they were doomed to brutish ignorance, to unremitting toil, without holidays, except on Sunday—day after day, week after week, year after year, till they could push the truck no longer, till the pick fell from their hands.
The chimney-sweep’s case was almost as bad as the miner’s. He too was taken at a very early age, and his duty was to climb the chimney, sweeping it as he went up. It is not a pleasant thing to climb a chimney choked with soot; it abraded hands, elbows, and knees: sometimes the little wretch could get no higher; if he failed he was beaten unmercifully. There was a curious prejudice against sweeping with a brush: the child was allowed to go unwashed, though the neglect of cleanliness was certain to bring on a dreadful disease. It was not till four years after the Queen began her reign that an Act was passed protecting the children and substituting the brush for the human body.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE—FRONT VIEW
BUCKINGHAM PALACE—GARDEN VIEW
This was the treatment of children in mill, in mine, in town. There were other lines and branches of cruelty because children are helpless. But these examples will suffice.
Let us leave the children and turn to the men. The change for the better began, I believe, with the ideas of the French Revolution, at first eagerly caught by the English working people: it was continued by the long agitation for the Reform Act of 1832 and the fierce resistance of the Duke of Wellington and the Bishops: these ideas and this agitation taught the people how to combine and act together. They also taught the people to hate a Government in which they had no share or part or lot. A great many—though still the minority—could now read; the papers they read were bitterly hostile to the ruling powers. As I have already pointed out, there was no loyalty at all among the working-men of the Thirties; they did not pretend any. Their papers were revolutionary; the things they said of the Queen and the Prince Consort were revolting; the aristocracy, according to them, were open and shameless; the clergy were pampered hypocrites. What has happened since then? The people have been admitted to their share in the Government; they can do what they like: if they choose they can alter the Constitution. Do they choose? Not at all; they have become loyal; they have become, comparatively, conservative.