And first, as to the tone. Using in her reply the manner pointed out by us, Miss Martineau says, that certain articles in the eleventh volume of this journal[A] put forward inaccurate statements, “in a temper and by language which convey their own condemnation.” But, lest it should be thought that what was wrong in us cannot be quite right in herself, Miss Martineau adds, on the same page, “I like courtesy as well as anybody can do; but when vicious legislation and social oppression are upheld by men in high places, the vindication of principle, and exposure of the mischief, must come before consideration of private feeling.” Now, confessing for a moment our defect of temper, might we not say, very fairly, that a writer who believes in his heart that resistance to a given law dooms large numbers of men to mutilation, and not few to horrible deaths, may honestly speak with some indignation of the resistance by which those deaths are produced; and that the same right to be angry is not equally possessed by an advocate who argues that the deaths cannot be helped, and that nobody has a right to meddle specially in any way with a mill-owner’s trade? But if any dispassionate reader of the articles to which Miss Martineau refers should pass from them to the personal invective with which they are met, he will not fail to perceive that we attacked only what we held to be an evil course of opposition to a necessary law, and abided firmly by the leading features of the case, apart from any personal consideration. We spoke plainly, as the case required, and with the earnest feeling that the case called forth; but it will be found, on reference, that in not one of these articles was an attack made upon any person whomsoever; that the chairman of the National Association was not named; that when cases of accident were necessarily cited, it was enough for us to say “a certain mill,” because we spoke of principles and not of persons. It will be found, also, that we took pains to disconnect our plain speaking upon one shortcoming; from a general disparagement of mill-owners; and that we went quite out of our way to occupy no inconsiderable part of these papers with a cordial reminder of the excellent enterprises and fine spirit that belonged to chieftains of the cotton class. Miss Martineau says for herself, that “in a matter of political morality so vital as this, there must be no compromise and no mistake.” We felt so too; but also felt that it would be a great mistake and a great compromise of principle, to intrude personalities on the discussion of it.