The Bill which should have put an end to the inhuman practice of employing children to sweep chimneys, was thrown out on the third reading in the House of Lords (having passed the Commons without a dissentient voice) by a speech from Lord Lauderdale, the force of which consisted in, literally, a Joe Millar jest. He related that an Irishman used to sweep his chimney by letting a rope down, which was fastened round the legs of a goose, and then pulling the goose after it. A neighbour to whom he recommended this as a convenient mode objected to it upon the score of cruelty to the goose: upon which he replied, that a couple of ducks might do as well. Now if the Bill before the house had been to enact that men should no longer sweep chimneys but that boys should be used instead, the story would have been applicable. It was no otherwise applicable than as it related to chimney-sweeping: but it was a joke, and that sufficed. The Lords laughed; his Lordship had the satisfaction of throwing out the Bill, and the home Negro trade has continued from that time, now seven years, till this day, and still continues. His Lordship had his jest, and it is speaking within compass to say that in the course of those seven years two thousand children have been _sacrificed_ in consequence. The worst actions of Lord Lauderdale's worst ancestor admit of a better defence before God and Man. Had his Lordship perused the evidence which had been laid before the House of Commons when the Bill was brought in, upon which evidence the Bill was founded? Was he aware of the shocking barbarities connected with the trade, and inseparable from it? Did he know that children inevitably lacerate themselves in learning this dreadful occupation? that they are frequently crippled by it? frequently lose their lives in it by suffocation, or by slow fire? that it induces a peculiar and dreadful disease? that they who survive the accumulated hardships of a childhood during which they are exposed to every kind of misery, and destitute of every kind of comfort, have at the age of seventeen or eighteen to seek their living how they can in some other employment,—for it is only by children that this can be carried on? Did his Lordship know that girls as well as boys are thus abused? that their sufferings begin at the age of six, sometimes a year earlier? finally that they are sold to this worst and most inhuman of all slaveries, and sometimes stolen for the purpose of being sold to it?