76 ENGLISHSAGA

Report on the employment of children in coal mines, it had done
something to awaken the conscience of England. It had added
to pity fear, and, as is the way with the English in times of trial,
a sober resolve to remove the cause of the evil. So long as the
rioting continued, worthy and peace-loving folk set their faces
resolutely against the rioters. But when it was over they took
counsel of their consciences.1

Many, particularly the manufacturers and the new middle-
class, who had nothing to gain by the protection of agriculture
and much by the cheapening of provisions, laid the blame on
the Corn Laws. Others, like the country landowners, condemned -
the inhumanity of the millowners, who retaliated by pointing
to the low wages and neglected hovels of the agricultural workers
in the southern counties. As Ashley, the factory reformer, knew
to his misery, none were worse than those on the Dorset estate
of his father, Lord Shaftesbury. The economists and the states-
men who subscribed to their theories continued to reiterate the
importance of non-interference with the laws of supply and
demand.

But with the general thinking public the view gained ground
that there were limits to the efficacy of laissez-faire, where public
health and the employment of children were concerned. Sanitary
reform and factory regulation began for the first time to be
taken seriously. Early in 1843 Ashley was able to carry without
• opposition an address to the Crown for the diffusion of moral
and religious education among the working classes. In the
following year a new Factory Bill became law limiting the
hours of children under sixteen to six and a half a day and
establishing further regulations for the fencing of machinery
and the inspection of industrial premises. In the same year a
commission on the Health of Towns was appointed. Its Report
written by Edwin Chadwick revealed that of fifty large towns
examined, only six had a good water supply and not one an
adequate drainage system.

Public opinion was by now far ahead of parliamentary

V* It is certainly a very dismal matter for reflection, and well worthy of the considera-
tion of the profoundest political philosophers, that the possession of such a Constitution,
all pur wealth, industry, ingenuity, peace, and that superiority in wisdom and virtue
which we so confidently claim, are not sufficient to prevent the existence of a large
mountain of human misery, of one stratum in society in the most deplorable state, both
moral and physical, to which mankind can be reduced, and that all our advantages do
not secure us against the occurrence of evils and mischiefs so great as to threaten a
mighty social and political convulsion." GreviUe Memoirs, Part II, Vol If, /jro-so.