CHAPTER XTII.

PP? SESSION OF 1844— FACTORY LEGISLATION—THE constr
TUENCIES.

1844. THE statistics of agitation sometimes raise a smile. The
x 4p, nice measurement of argumentative importunity in terms of
weight and bulk, seems incongruous in connexion with any”
thing so complex, so volatile, so invisibly rooted as opinio®
We all know how at each annual meeting the listeners
ceive these figures of tracts, pamphlets, and leaflets with the
same kind of enthusiasm with which a farmer surveys bi
mountains of quickening manure. At Manchester, in the
autumn of 1843, the report was stupendous. Five hundred
persons had been employed in distributing tracts from hous?
to house. Five millions of such tracts had been delivered ©
parliamentary electors in England and Scotland ; and the
sotal distributed to non-electors and others had been UP"
wards of nine millions. The weight of papers thus circ™
:ated was no less than one hundred tons. One hundred and
forty towns bad been visited, and there had been five and
twenty meetings in the agricultural districts. It was res
solved that the new campaign should be conducted with
redoubled vigour. In October (1843), after a veheme?!
contest, in which the Monopolist candidate was backed by
all the influence of the Government, a Free Trader was I¥’
turned for the city, and this great victory gave new heart 1
the movement throughout the country. Fifty thonsand