rj LETTER ON FAOTORY LEGISLATION. 115

with al] hig energy. It is historically interesting to know 1887.
What Liberal electors were thinking about in those days. Zr. 28.
We find that they asked their candidate his opinion as to the
Property qualification for Members of Parliament, Primogeniture,
 the Poor Law Amendment Act, and the Factory
Question, The last of the list was probably the most im-Portant,
 for Cobden had taken the trouble many months
before 0 set out his opinions on that subject in a letter
to the chairman of his committee. The matter remains of
vital importance in our industrial system to the present
time, ang is still, in the face of the competition of other
Wations, the object of a controversy which is none the less
alive in the region of theory, because the legislature has
decided it in one way in the region of practice. As that
18 80, it is interesting still to know Cobden’s earliest opinions
°0 the matter; and I have therefore printed at the end
of the volume the letter that Cobden wrote, in the autumn
of 1886, on the restriction by Parliament of the hours of
labour in factories +
What he said comes to this, that for plain physical reasons
Bo child ought to be put to work in a cotton mill so early
88 the age of thirteen, but whatever restrictions on the
hours of labour might be desirable, it was not for the
legislature to impose them : it was for the workmen to insist
pon them, relying not on Parliament, but on their own
action. A workman by saving the twenty pounds that would
Carry him across the Atlantic, could make himself as inde-Pendent
 of hig employer, as the employer is independent
of him ; and in this independence he would be free, without
the emasculating interference of Parliament, to drive his
OWn bargain as to how many hours he would work. In
Meeting his committee at Stockport, Cobden repeated his
Conviction that the factory operatives had it in their power
* Bee Appendix, Note A.