act itself were clear to their understanding. They most properly confined themselves to the terms of the act, and to the determination of this point, whether it excluded the working by relays or not. It might be, (as has been strongly asserted,) perfectly true, that to permit that system, p. 15frustrated in great measure, if not wholly, the attempt to better the condition of those young persons; but however true, it was nothing to the purpose. And those judges, as the event shewed did come to the conclusion that the terms in which the act was couched were not sufficient to make the system which had been used, illegal: and therefore judgment went in favour of the mill-owners. Now let it be granted that this, in its effect, destroys the bill as a measure of humanity: that so to legislate is in fact cruelty, whatever the intention of the act may have been. But shall we on this account blame the judges in the case? Assuredly not; they have but done their necessary duty in interpretation. Shall we say the court was not competent, or the decision not binding, or in any way attempt to resist its legal effect? Assuredly not; or we overthrow all principles of law and order. Nevertheless shall we say that this judgment convicts of cruelty or double dealing the framers of the measure, or the parliament which passed it? Assuredly not; because it is much easier; much more accordant with common sense and experience; much more agreeable to charity and reason, to believe that the subtleties of language introduced an unintentional ambiguity, which the judge’s eye was obliged to search out and judicially recognize, than to believe that Mr. Fielden, or Lord Ashley, or even parliament at large, when they professed to relieve young persons working in factories, intended to “palter with them in a double sense and keep the word of promise to the ear but break it to the hope.” Does any one then, I ask again, now feel justified in charging those parties with cruelty, whose bill is p. 16nevertheless found capable of a cruel working. Do we charge them with the intention of such ambiguity, and such consequences, though they are found both to exist in the act of parliament? Do we infer the animus from the wording, and say that such as the bill is practically, such must have been the intention of its framers?