CENTRALIZATION.—ENGLISH CAPITAL.

 ——o——

How often—nay, how everlastingly do we have dinned in our ears, the magnificent boasts of the magnitude of English capital—the millions invested in this, and that, and the other branch of business : then the immense power of British machinery —the hundreds of thousands of horses power, and the millions of human power, they concentrate and centralize : we are so constantly in the habit of hearing these things, that we come at last to exult in them as a portion of our natural glory and happiness ; and almost fancy them a part of our personal property. But alas! how dearly are these glories — this centralization purchased ! Lord Brougham and the other writers on the advantages and power of centralization, never tell us that the more the power—the more the profits—the more the wealth of the country is concentrated in a few foci of centralization, the more, pro tanto, is it taken from the great body of the people amongst whom it was formerly spread; and that by how much more elegant, more accomplished and refined, are the sons and daughters of a comparatively few great capitalists and manufacturers; by so much the more wretched, neglected, ignorant, poor and miserable are the sons and daughters of the millions who are condemned by the modern system of centralization, aided as it is in grinding the poor, by a great "Church and State" machine, the national debt, and the never ending, annual, weekly, daily taxation of the working people to pay its interest, the debt is the poor man's great enemy.
Mr Arkwright died lately in Dublin, possessed of the more than princely fortune of Seven Millions! This sounds magnificently; but we should not, except through the humane and benevolent labors of Lord Ashley, have heard a word of the vice, the depravity, the physical debility, and moral degradation produced among the millions of working people in Manchester, Bolton, and all Lancashire, Glasgow —in short, wherever there is a cotton mill, by that very machinery which has accumulated masses of wealth in the hands of the Arkwrights, the Peels, and a few others. We do not condemn machinery, but we condemn that partial—that one sided— that class legislation, which has been for the last century employed all on the side of capital— all on the side of the mills and machinery—all in favor of centralization; while till Lord Ashley generously forced the sufferings of the people upon the unwilling ears of the legislature (except a few, puerile, and abortive attempts about factory children), on the behalf of the suffering people, nothing was done! They were unheeded (except by the tax gatherer); they were left both by "Church and State" to sink gradually down in morals, in religion, in animal strength, and household comforts, to that appalling state, which, when depicted by Lord Ashley, roused even legislators from their silken slumbers, to think of the working people by whose labor they live !
One word as to Lord Ashley's description of the physical and moral state of the manufacturing and mining population of England, (which, by some evidence adduced as to the state of the peasantry, is not confined to factories and mines). We have here in this colony, some influential persons, who, frightened—appalled at the dangerous influx of Irish Immigrants two or three years ago, urged, solicited, prayed the government, instead of them, to send us English, Scotch, Belgians, Germans, Jews, or Mahometans, Coolies—any body but Irish Papists ! Will posterity believe it. Should these lines we now pen haply survive ourselves, and chance to meet the eye of some unborn historian, will he believe that two eminent men, who never agreed before, the one a high dignitary of the Church of England, and the other a divine of great talent and no little celebrity as a writer, should both concur in the endeavour to exclude the robust—the virtuous—the uncontaminated rustic population of Ireland, (the very sort wanted) from this colony, in order to bring out the feeble, vicious, and depraved inhabitants of Manchester, Bolton, Leeds, Glasgow, and, Paisley—nay, the very inmates of those mines and factories described by Lord Ashley with all their ignorance—their nameable and UNNAMEABLE vices as described in the Judicial reports of Norfolk Island: vices unknown in Ireland except among Bishops, and the very slang term for which is unheard there amongst the common people, however universal amongst the English; nay, our ears were horrified in this city by hearing it uttered by female lips; and let the press talk as it will, of Norfolk Island, those vices that horrible depravity had not its birth there : Norfolk Island was not its fons et origo. No, it was imported! It grew up and exists, under that Church and State, which, having utterly disregarded their duty to the comforts and the morality of THE PEOPLE, while all their wisdom —all their cares—all their energies were directed to keep up the riches and dignities of the Church, and the Revenue of the nation, in order to pay the interest of its DEBT and provide for a horde of aristocratic paupers, places, offices, and pensions, and of course the other state charges, give every encouragement to mines, factories, mills, and all those great centralized producers of articles of export, requisite for the production of revenue; while (as we said) the situation, education, means and mode of living of the great mass of the people, were thought beneath ecclesiastic or legislative regard, and behold the results!
And yet it is with all these facts, as staring as the sun at noon, that those two learned divines, whose minds it would seem are haunted by some hobgoblin visions of the nursery, and they, perhaps, are terrified by the aspect of beasts rising up from the abyss, which disturb their judgment, and they call out for hordes of Manchester and Glasgow weavers, and Staffordshire miners, to save them from this PHANTASMA, which appals them as the ghost of Banquo did Macbeth!
We give the following extracts from English prints, which may throw some light on the question :

[From the Illustrated London News.]

It is with sincere pleasure that we congratulate the country upon the defeat of Mr. Cumming Bruce in his endeavour to render inefficient, and indeed to postpone entirely the benefit of one of the best and most humane clauses of Lord Ashley's bill of last session, passed for the relief of the population in the colliery districts. It will be in the memory of our readers how terrible and revolting was the exposure of the mine and colliery slavery—how it was confined to no age, or sex, or condition of weakness or infirmity—how it was visited upon debilitated men, enfeebled youth, delicate travailing women, and children of deformed bodies, and stunted growth— how it cursed its victims with mental and bodily prostration, and demoralized in character, while it decayed in strength— how, in a word it fixed its loathsomeness upon the public mind, and heart, until the sight of the monster was no longer endurable, until shuddering humanity had raised its cry for pity, and an almost unanimous legislature interfered to put it down. Lord Ashley's spirited conduct in originating the mitigation of that fearful slavery, and, indeed, the destruction of its most hideous forms, won for him—as did his efforts in favour of the factory children—a dear and far-spread fame, and every charitable Christian hailed the boon that was bestowed upon the long unhappy labourers with the purest satisfaction and delight. The better feelings of the heart were enlisted and warmed over the subject, and the glow of pleasurable feeling, was unalloyed in the breast of every virtuous member of the great community. Nevertheless, it was predicted that avarice would yet endeavour to step in with its corrupt influence to weaken the excellence of the measure, and to seek to maintain some of the worst abuses of the former cruel system, and the prophecy which thus foreboded has not proved, false. Mr. Cumming Bruce, as the mouthpiece of one section of the owners and workers of mines, has this week attempted to mar one of the most natural and beautiful features of the Ashley Bill —that which enfranchised the female youth of the various districts for ever from their former horrid course of life—horrid, as regarded its bodily endurance and its moral wretchedness alike—and, forbade that unholy prostitution which so largely and lamentably prevailed—of youth and beauty to unnatural toil—of virtue to unnatural licentiousness. Mr. Cumming Bruce sought to virtually abrogate this protecting clause, by deferring its operation for a few years to come, and still permitting unmarried females to hire themselves to the same torturing and afflicting degradation which they were once forced to endure, and of which the exposure had so recently aroused the shame, repugnance and anger of all professing Christians. It is to the honour of the British House of Commons that we have to record the signal defeat of Mr. Bruce and the mercenaries and sophists who voted with him, by a majority of 137 to 23, a majority triumphant for the cause of morality and humanity alike.

One of the pet arguments of the "twenty-three" was the casuistical one that young women had a right to labour at that dreadful vocation—or, indeed, at any other—after they had attained the age when reason and reflection are supposed to endow the judgment with a responsibility of its own, and to make them free agents in the social world. So that, were this doctrine admitted, every means might be adopted to lure the poor wretches to follow a dreadful calling, and the words " voluntary engagement" be made available to cover all the sin and tyranny and misery endured under the self-responsibility which they would pre-suppose. As if, in truth and nature, young girls would ever choose of free will any such dreadful alternatives—as if any other plea than that of stern and starving necessity could excuse it, even to themselves. The Times has well treated this part of the subject in reference to its amelioration under the recent law:—
" The present lack of employment was pressed as aggravating the cruelty of precluding females from their accustomed labour. It must be remembered however, that this fact may be placed in a very different aspect. No means of employment are annihilated by the late bill. The same quantity of coal will still be used, and must be still dug out of the pit. But for this work men instead of women must now be employed, as they always ought to have been. What one sex loses the other and the fitter sex gains; the difference being only this, that the coalowner will have to pay higher wages for his labour. It suits the coal masters to parade the number of destitute women who are driven from their most miserable employment. It does not suit their purpose to remember the destitute workmen who have now found a more congenial livelihood by taking their place, still less to recollect that the superfluity of male labour renders their own desire to tax the cheaper sinews of their unhappy countrywomen doubly and trebly inexcusable."
So much for the differences of labour, and the variations of sympathy between those who care for the labourers and those who care for themselves. But even the heartless doctrines of political economy could not justify the arguments of Mr. Cumming Bruce in favour of delay in the operation of Lord Ashley's clause.
" We have accomplished our object —the enfranchisement of Scotch and English females from the cruel bondage in which they were held. We have also incurred the dreaded evil—the distress resulting from the displacement of female labour. The females themselves must be, though perhaps slowly, finding for themselves fresh means of support. Their places must be, to some considerable extent, already filled by male labourers. The shock to labour has been given, and matters are now in process of adjustment. We are called upon to retrace our steps—again to disturb the course of labour which would otherwise be now determined— and all for the sake, or at least with the necessary result, of having, at the expiration of the "three, four, or five years," respite, a second edition of the crisis (if crisis it is to be called) which we have now once gone through, and of enabling men who have shown themselves so disgracefully reckless of the well-being of their labourers to evade, almost ad libitum, the provisions of the law which was passed to meet their negligence or selfishness. Nor is it consoling to observe, that one of the most obvious modes of such evasion will consist in the substitution of concubinage for marriage among the female labourers."
But, no : English feeling will not respond to such cold-blooded endeavours to mar the beauty of a benevolent act; English charity repudiates the heartlessness of such a proposition; and the Christian spirit of Parliament, exercising a fair and bright wisdom, has crushed the bad ambition of continuing young women in a wretched slavery with a virtuous determination which we are proud to applaud.

Morning Chronicle (Sydney, NSW ) 1844,http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31741888