A.D. 1776 
—1850. 
ohen a 
Jommis- 
ston re- 
ported in 
1840. 
LAISSEZ FAIRE 
smployer had survived from the time when this older practice 
had been generally current. There came, in consequence, to 
be elements of uncertainty, and serious deductions from the 
miner's pay, which prevented him from receiving a regular 
reward for the time spent at his work?. 
This matter, however, like all questions in regard to 
2dult male labour, lay outside the scope of the investigation 
which was undertaken on the motion of Lord Ashley. . He 
had been taunted with a special animus against factory- 
owners, and in 1840 he proceeded to move that a Commission 
should be appointed to investigate the whole subject of the 
employment of women and children in collieries and mines’. 
In 1842, the Commission presented their Report?, which 
revealed such a disgusting and brutalising state of affairs, 
that there was a unanimity of opinion in favour of an 
immediate measure of redress, This was all the more 
304 
shance. The working miner is almost always in some measure a gambler, and 
»mbarks in the adventures of the mine. In common, the miner is nod disposed to 
adjust the scale of his expenses to the average of his earnings. Being accustomed 
0 the occasional receipt of considerable sums of money, money too which has 
owed in suddenly upon bim, rather from good fortune than from proportionate 
sxertions, he often raises his expenditure and mode of living to a pitch, to which 
:he labourer in agriculture ventures not to aspire. He feeds on better diet, and 
wears clothes of finer materials than the husbandman. 
«And, in general, he persists in this manner of life, in spite of a change of 
“ircumstances. He is buoyed up with the sanguine hopes of a gamester: and for 
what he cannot pay to-day draws on the favourable luck of to-morrow. This 
natural propensity is cherished and aggravated by the ease with which he obtains 
credit, in comparison of those classes of labourers whose gains though steady, are 
jmited. If he happens to be unsnecessful, he is trusted nevertheless at shops, 
ind permitted to run up long scores at public-houses, through the hopes enter- 
:ained by the shopkeeper and the publican that a day will come when fortune wilt 
smile on the debtor. Thus the habits of the miner are seldom interrupted by any 
rubs and difficulties which may teach him caution. He has lese occasion than 
nost other men to dread the immediate inconveniences of poverty; and does not 
willingly learn the necessity of frugality and forecast.” Georgical Essays, by 
A. Hunter, Vol. I. (1803), 49, On the Situation of the Mining Poor, by Rev. 
T. Gisborne. 
1 This state of things constituted a ground of appeal to the public. ‘Let me 
tell you, brave men, that the great object which you at present seek becomes 
sretty generally known to the public, to consist simply in getting twelve hours 
wages for every twelve hours you labour, as no other men on earth have ever been 
-equired to toil.” An earnest Address and Urgent Appeal to the People of 
England in behalf of the oppressed and suffering Pitmen of the Counties of 
Northumberland and Durham, by W. Scott, 1831, p. 19. On the irregularity of 
payment to lead miners, see F. Hall, Appeal to the Poor Miner (1818), p. 40, 
2 3 Hansard, Lv. 1260. 8 Reports, 1842, xv. XVI. XVIL