A correspondent in Manchester informs us, that the Factory Bill
is likely to be made a dead letter, by the passive resistance of the factory-
owners. We are told that it is their determination to disregard the Eight Hours regulation altogether ; that they will employ, no children who will not work the same number of hours--twelve or fourteen—as the adults ; and that the first conviction under the new act will be the signal for all of them to close their factories, and thus throw the whole of the immense manufacturing population at once out of employ. Such a state of things could not long continue : but the masters, whose act it would be, are better able to hold out than the workmen in the case of a strike among themselves. So desperate an opposition to the working of the measure could not have been seriously entertained but upon strong grounds : and if it is carried into effect, it will afford prima' facie evidence of the injustice and impolicy of the new law.
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