Among the enemies of the new poor-law were the keenest agitators for factory legislation.The succession of leaders in that movement is characteristic.The early measures introduced by the first Sir Robert Peel and supported by Owen had been tentative and of limited application.As a demand arose for more drastic measures,the first bill was introduced in 1831by John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869),afterwards Lord Broughton.Hobhouse's election for Westminster in 1820had been a triumph for the Benthamites;and he was afterwards one of the members through whom Place tried to influence legislation.Hobhouse was too much of the aristocrat to be up to Place's standard of Radicalism,and on this point he was too much of an economist to lead the movement.He declared the demands of the agitators to be hopelessly unpractical;or,as Oastler put it,gave in to 'the cold,calculating,but mistaken Scottish philosophers,'who had an overwhelming influence on the country.(20)The lead passed to Michael Thomas Sadler (1780-1835).Sadler,a Tory and an evangelical,had proposed to introduce the poor-law system into Ireland.He had attacked Malthus (1830)in a book to be presently noticed.He declared that Hobhouse had surrendered to the economists,who were 'the pests of society and the persecutors of the poor.'(21)He now proposed a more stringent measure,which led to the appointment of a committee of the House of Commons in 1832.The report (presented 8th August 1832)startled and shocked the public.A royal commission was appointed in 1833to collect further evidence.Sadler had meanwhile been defeated by Macaulay in a sharp contest for Leeds.His health soon afterwards broke down,under the strain of carrying on the agitation,and the lead fell to Lord Shaftesbury (then Lord Ashley).Shaftesbury,again,as an aristocrat and an evangelical,was a natural enemy of the Utilitarian.He was heartily approved by Southey,from the study of whose works he professed himself to have 'derived the greatest benefit.'He thought that the country was 'drooping under the chilly blasts of political economy,'and regarded the millowner as 'the common enemy of the operatives and the country-gentleman.'(22)Richard Oastler,the most effective and popular organiser of the agitation outside of parliament,was also a Tory,a churchman,and a protectionist.He had joined in the anti-slavery movement,and now thought that the factory system involved a worse slavery than that of the negro.He accepted the title of 'king of the factories,'given in ridicule by his enemies.(23)He became a martyr to his hatred of the new Poor-law by resigning his place as agent to an estate rather than enforce its provisions.He,too,hated the economists,and denounced ,the horrible Malthusian doctrine,'which he took to be that the 'Creator sent children into the world without being able to find food for them.'(24)John Fielden,who became the parliamentary leader in 1846,upon Shaftesbury's temporary retirement from the House,had been brought up as a Quaker and a Tory.He became a Utilitarian and a Radical.The typical Radical for him was not Place but Cobbett,his colleague for Oldham in the first reformed parliament.'Honest John Fielden'made a fortune by cotton-spinning,but wrote a tract called the Curse of the Factory System,and no doubt shared Cobbett's hatred of the Scottish 'philosophers'and Parson Malthus.
These brief indications may be sufficient for one point.The agitators on behalf of the factory movement took the political economists,'Malthusians,'and Utilitarians to be their natural and their most dangerous enemies.They assumed that the economist doctrine might be condensed into the single maxim 'do nothing.'
Whether it were a question of encouraging trade or supporting the poor,or putting down 'white slavery'in a factory,government was to leave things alone or,in other words,to leave them to the devil.Chalmers,though an ultra-Malthusian in some respects,approved the factory movement,because,as he said,it was a question between free trade and Christianity.(25)Christianity orders us to help our neighbours,and political economy to let them alone.Mill,of course,would have repudiated this doctrine.
Political economy,he would have replied,does not forbid us to do good,or it would be opposed to Utilitarianism as well as to Christianity.It only shows us what will do good by pointing out the consequences of our actions,and Christianity can scarcely forbid us to disregard consequences.Nor,in fact,was it true that the economists unequivocally condemned the factory acts.
Malthus had approved them,and M'Culloch wrote warmly to Shaftesbury to express his sympathy.
