Charles Poulett Thomson

Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, GCB, PC (13 September 1799 – 19 September 1841) was a British businessman, politician, diplomat and the first Governor General of the united Province of Canada.

Thomson was returned to the House of Commons as MP for Dover in 1826. In 1830 he joined Earl Grey's government as Vice-President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy, an office he held until 1834.

The above extracts are from the Wikipedia entry.

1836 'INFANT SLAVERY. We are far from being well satisfied with the result of the debate on the Factory Bill. The factory children call for the protection of the country, and Humanity is equally called upon to throw her shield over them. We cannot consent to place the health, the happiness, and the morality of a considerable share of our youthful population in companion with the value of certain bales of cotton or silk. One satisfactory circumstance presents itself in the division on this question, which is, that many Members, with great propriety, avoided making it a matter of party spirit. We find Dr. Lushington, Lord Chandos, Mr. Serjeant Talfourd, and Sir Henry Hardinge, voting on the same side, and thus it should be; great questions of national importance ought not to be perverted into party struggles. Where is the conscience all the time that a vote is being given for a mere party motive ? It is this party system that has rent the country asunder.
Let us not forget to mention that Mr. Fielden and Mr. Brotherton (two mill-owners), much to their honour, voted in favour of the poor factory children. The feeling through the country is decidedly averse to this Factory Bill and the second reading was only carried by a majority of Two, a majority so small, that we think Mr. Thomson will not avail himself of it. Our readers must be familiar with the sufferings of the factory children; they must recollect the frightful statements that were made of the condition of those children when the Factory Bill that is now in operation was progressing through the legislature, of overworked and fainting boys and girls aroused from a state of drowsiness by the application of a "billy roller” to their backs and shoulders, of premature decrepitude and deaths, of children walking upwards of twenty miles in a day, in a mill, independently of their other exertions, and the memorable story of the sleepless girl, who having a certain distance to walk from her home to the places of work, was continually awakening her parent by the inquiry, "Father, is it time?" These things cannot be forgotten by our readers, by whom the new efforts of the mill-owners to renew them must be regarded with feelings of pain and indignation. We have emancipated the negro slaves, and there is not a man in England bold enough to propose a revival of their slavery. Mr. POULETT THOMPSON, however, has proposed a renewal of the white-child-slavery in British factories, and one hundred and seventy seven members of the House of Commons, have supported his proposition. Negro slavery was not worse than this ; no torture inflicted upon the blacks was ever worse than the torture of white children under the old factory system, and yet it is that cruel system which Mr. Poulett Thomson and the mill-owners seek to renew. There are ruffians in the English factories as well as in the West India plantations, but, strange to say, the liberality of some people, while it denounces the one, affords protection to the enormity of the other.'

See Also

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Sources of Information

• Biography of George Julius Poulett Scrope, ODNB