says the London Herald, "is in fact shown by any party to these children. Fortunate it is for them if they can get food, and still more fortunate if they get time to enjoy it; but amusement or recreation they have none, many of them never seeing daylight for weeks in the winter; and as for education, secular or religious, they have no opportunity to acquire it, even if there was any one to impart it. Their condition combines all the toil and confinement of the galley-slave, with the oppression of the kidnapped African; and they grow up ferocious from ill-treatment, to retort in after years the same ill-treatment upon others."

Female Children.-Multitudes of young girls are harnessed to carts in these subterranean prisons, and made to draw them on their hands and knees, "through confined passages, perhaps not two feet high, and frequently a foot of that space a thick sludge of water and coal dust."

The Report says that girls are preferred to boys as "hurriers," for their greater docility, and are taken into the mines even at an earlier age, from a supposition that "when infants they are the more 'cute."

Another commissioner states, that to all the revolting cruelties practised on the boys, the girls are equally subjected: "Girls perform all the offices of trapping, hurrying, filling, riddling, topping, and getting (coal ;) just as they are performed by boys. The practice of employing females in coal-pits is flagrantly disgraceful to a Christian

as well as to a civilized country. On descending Messrs. Hopwood's pit at Barnsley, I found assembled round the fire a group of men, boys, and girls, some of whom were of the age of puberty, the girls as well as the boys stark naked down to the waist, their hair bound up with a tight cap, and trousers supported by their hips."

It is shocking to read such testimony from tender females. One says: "I work in Hardhill mine. We hurry the carts by pushing behind, but I frequently draw with ropes and chains as the horses do. It is dirty, slavish work, and the water quite covers our ancles. I knock my head against the roofs, as they are not so high as I am, and they cause me to stoop, and makes my back ache."

Another thus speaks of the hardships they undergo: "My employment is carrying coal.-Am frequently worked from four in the morning till six at night, and every other week I work night work. I then go down at two in the day, and come up at four or six in the morning. Two years ago the pit closed in upon thirteen of us, and we were without food and light two days; nearly one day we were up to our chins in water."

These volumes might be filled with this branch of the evidence contained in the Report; but, as remarks the London Herald: (6 We may content ourselves with stating generally, that there is no variation in any part of the voluminous evidence

collected on this subject of young girls being employed in the coal mines, except that their labour is more severe, and treatment more cruel, if possible, in the east of Scotland than elsewhere."

Young and married women. This class is very numerous in the coal mines, and their treatment no less brutal than that of the others. We extract from their own evidence: "We learn from the commissioners that the labour required by women, is" filling, riddling, and carrying," work which none but the most robust men can endure, and which generally breaks down their iron constitution very quick.

"Janet Duncan, aged seventeen," says the Report, "was a coal bearer at Hen-muir-pit. The carts she pushed contained three cwt. of coals, and it was very severe work, especially when they had to stay before the carts to prevent their coming down too fast; they frequently run too quick and knock us down. Is able to say that the hardest day-light work is infinitely superior to the best of coal work." Margaret Drysdale, aged fifteen, "did not like the work, but her mother was dead, and her father took her down and she had no choice. Her employment is to draw carts, and she had harness or drag ropes on, like the horses."

One more, Katherine Logan, aged sixteen, "began to work at coal carrying more than five years since; works in harness now; draws backward with her face to the tubs; the ropes and chains

go under her pit clothes, (which consist simply of a pair of boy's trousers ;) 'it is o'er sair work, especially when we had to crawl.'"

What is the effect of such slave-toil on married women, and why do they go to the mines?

One reason why married women enter the pits is, that "if they did not work below, the children would not go down so soon." Another, "because they must go to the mines or starve, for there is work to be found no where else." Two fearful but sufficient reasons! One of these witnesses says, that the oppression of coal bearing, is such as to injure them in after life, few existing whose legs are not injured or else their hips." The following brief extracts will explain the rest :

"Jane Johnson, aged twenty-nine.-I could carry two hundred weight when fifteen years of age, but now feel the weakness upon me from the strains. I have been married nearly ten years, and have had four children, and have usually wrought till within a day of the child's birth. Many women lose their strength early from overwork, and get injured in their backs and legs."

"Jane Peacock, aged forty.-I have wrought in the bowels of the earth thirty-three years. Have been married twenty-three years, and had nine children, two still born, and think they were so from oppressive work. A vast number of women have dead children and false births, which are worse, as they are not able to work after the latter. It is only horse work, and ruins the wo

men, it crushes their haunches, bends their ancles, and makes them old women at forty.

"Isabel Wilson, aged forty-five.--When on St. John's work I was a carrier of coals, which caused me to miscarry five times, from the strains, and I was very ill after each.

"Elizabeth M'Neil.-I knew a woman who came up, and the child was born in the field next the coal-hill. Women frequently miscarry below, and suffer much after.

"Jane Wood.-The severe work causes women much trouble. They frequently have premature births. My neighbour, Jenny M'Donald, has lain ill for six months, and William King's wife lately died from miscarriage, and a vast number of women suffer from similar causes."

The Report states that all the married women examined, (and they were many,) relate their experience to the same purport. The Herald inquires "if it may not be asked, without exaggeration, whether such a system can be regarded as any thing less than murderous ?"

"In fact," says a very intelligent witness, Mr. William Hunter, the mining foreman of Ormiston colliery, "women always did the lifting, or heavy part of the work, and neither they nor the children were treated like human beings, nor are they where they are employed. Females submit to work in places where no man, or even lad could be got to labour in; they work on bad roads, up to their knees in water, in a posture nearly dou