Miss Martineau suggests the impropriety of any discussion until doubt has been removed by the settlement of a point raised before the Court of Queen’s Bench. The whole matter is to remain in abeyance--things are to go on as they are, and there are to be no convictions--while the point mainly at issue is awaiting the decision of the higher courts. Let us see what this means. The point at issue, as the pamphlet rightly states, is the interpretation of the words “securely fenced;” and it was agreed some time ago that in the case of a certain prosecution for unfenced machinery, the question should go before the Queen’s Bench to determine whether machinery could be said to be otherwise than securely fenced when no accident could be shown to have been caused by it; whether the fact that such machinery had led to deaths and mutilations in other mills proved it, or did not prove it, to be insecure in a mill where, as yet, no blood had been shed. The question so raised is an obvious quibble, and even the known uncertainty of the law could scarcely throw a doubt over the issue of a reference to its supreme courts. Meanwhile the issue was raised. The great purpose and business of the Association seemed to be to raise it. One, at least, of the inspectors stood aside from the disputed class of prosecutions till the doubt so raised should be definitively settled. We ourselves now fall under reproof for not solemnly and silently awaiting the decision of the question, whether securely fenced means so fenced as that an accident shall not have happened, or so fenced that an accident shall not arise. We now learn upon inquiry, that while we have been waiting, and the Association has been claiming a twice-pending judicial decision, we find--what do our readers suppose?--that no case whatever awaits the opinion of the Judges! We believe that we have now answered all the accusations laid against ourselves in Miss Martineau’s pamphlet. There is one citation of “actual resolutions of the Association,” side by side with our summary of their purport, presented as a “conviction of the humanity-monger,” of which we need say nothing, because it cannot fail to suggest to any person only moderately prejudiced, that our summary is very close and accurate indeed.