Let it be added that, with the establishment of that principle, came also the introduction of two innovations in our {204} factory system which lent inestimable value to the whole measure. One of these was the appointment of a number of factory inspectors, who were authorized to see that the purposes of the Act were properly carried out by the employers, and to report to the Government as to the working of the whole system and the necessity for further improvements. The other was the arrangement by which a portion of the time of all the younger workers in the factories was set apart for educational purposes, so that children should no longer be treated as mere machines for the making of goods and the earning of wages, but should be enabled and compelled to have their faculties developed by the instruction suited to their years. This provision in the Factories Act may be regarded as the first step towards that system of national education which it took so much trouble and so many years to establish in these countries. Lord Ashley had great work still to accomplish; but even if his noble career had closed with the passing of the Factories Act in 1833, his name would always be remembered as that of a man who, more than any other, helped to turn the first Reformed Parliament to the work of emancipating the English laboring classes in cities and towns from a servitude hardly less in conflict with the best interests of humanity than that which up to the same year had prevailed on the plantations of Jamaica and Demerara. The Reformed Parliament had still much difficult work to call out its best energies and to employ its new resources, but it had begun its tasks well, and had already given the country good earnest of its splendid future. {205} CHAPTER LXXV. THE STATE CHURCH IN IRELAND. [Sidenote: 1832--"Dark Rosaleen"]