Page:The Factory Controversy - Martineau (1855).djvu/56

 we find it decided that height constitutes a sufficient fence; and in another, that the erection of mules immediately under the shaft is an all-sufficient compliance with the law. While such facts as these should not be forgotten, there are more important considerations still; those which involve the principles of legislation. If men and women are to be absolved from the care of their own lives and limbs, and the responsibility cast on anybody else by the law of the land, the law of the land is lapsing into barbarism. If the charge is thrown upon the employers of industry, they will retire from occupations so intolerably burdened. That will be one consequence; and it seems to be agreed by the common sense of all concerned who have any common sense that our manufactures must cease, or the Factory Laws, as expounded by Mr. Horner, must give way. Are we, it may be asked, to stop, leaving one particular interest under the incubus of a special law, while the Common Law suffices for all others? Or are we to go on in the course of special legislation; and if so, where are we to stop? The Common Law provides securities against injuries from neglect or mismanagement in the regular course of the employments of workpeople of all orders. If the law is to be extended, as in the case of the mill-workers, to the prevention of "all accidents" from any instrument which can hurt or destroy, we must proceed to obviate all the dangers of life by law. Every landlord who erects cottages for his labourers must be legally compelled to put up fireguards, lest the children should be burnt. Every owner of houses must fence all the windows with gratings, lest people should fall out. At present, a silly servant here and there gets outside a window to clean it, against the most positive prohibition; and when the mistress comes home, she finds that the poor creature, who has taken advantage of her absence to disobey orders, has been impaled on the area rails, and is dying at the hospital. Mr. Horner and Mr. Dickens are bound to do their best to procure a law for putting up gratings at every window in