Page:The Factory Controversy - Martineau (1855).djvu/49

 show. He says, by his own pen or his contributor's (p. 605), "But the Factory Inspectors will proceed for penalties? Certainly they will; and then, if these gentlemen be members of the National Association of Factory Occupiers, they will have their case defended for them, and their fine immediately paid." Yet, while the writer declares his information to be drawn from the papers of the Association, he ignores the following conspicuous passages from their first Report (pp. 9. 12.) "Notwithstanding the distinctness with which the Association has declared its objects, it is constantly represented as a 'combination to resist the law,' as if it contemplated the indiscriminate defence of all actions and prosecutions under the Factory Act. Sir George Grey thus spoke of it to the deputation who recently presented to him a memorial against the conduct of Mr. Horner. But the Association has no such absurd object. It undertakes to 'protect its members from improper prosecutions and legal proceedings instituted or promoted by the Factory Inspectors or by other parties;' and it is acting strictly within the spirit of this undertaking when it relieves its members from the expense of individually testing the soundness of a government interpretation of the law, which, there are very strong reasons to believe, is erroneous, but which, nevertheless, the Government threatens to enforce against all Factory Occupiers, and which, therefore, justice demands, all should share the burden of testing. * * They have not paid, and they do not intend to pay, damages or penalties in any case whatever."

Here is Mr. Dickens's, or his contributor's account of the objects of the Association, declared to be derived from documents which he knew that not one in a thousand of his readers would ever see. Towards the conclusion, the writer declares his disbelief that the Association means what it says about defending only "cases which can be legitimately dealt with," and ignores the information of the Report, of a later date, that the association will pay no damages or penalties, in any case whatever. Having