s should no more be exempted
from the penal consequences of neglect than the employers.

Fancy--I can do it easily, over my sea-coal fire--fancy the coal dug out
of the pit, put into a waggon, that waggon put on a railway--travelling,
it may be, some distance, and depositing its precious burden in a
collier's hold; imagine this collier put to sea, and safely arrived in
the Thames. As Mr. Cobden said, "What next, and next?" Here a new
agency comes into play, the coal cannot come right to my fire. We leave
the collier at Gravesend and land, let us say, at Billingsgate--never
mind the fish, nor the porters, nor the fair dealers in marine products.
Come right away into Thames Street--cross it if you can, for this street,
of all London streets, bears away the palm for being blocked up at all
times and seasons, and this morning there has been a block lasting a
couple of hours; but the people here are used to it, and do not think it
worth while to have recourse to hard words, nor to repeat sounds very
much like oaths, nor to grow red in the face and threaten each other, as
is the case with the angry Jehus of Cheapside and Holborn Hill. We enter
a handsome building by a semi-circular portico, with Roman Doric columns,
and a tower 106 feet high. A beadle in magnificent livery, and of an
unusually civil character--for beadledom is generally a terror to our
species--meets us. We wish to see our friend; right into the middle of a
busy group of coal dealers and factors the beadle rushes, and repeats the
name of our friend; up one story, and then another, and then another, the
sound ascends; our friend hears it, and, rapidly descending, gives us a
welcome as warm as his own fire-side. We begin our voyage of
discovery:--first we descend and examine a Roman well, in excellent
preservation, discovered in excavating the foundation of the new
building. The water looks thick and muddy, but they tell you it is
clear: but the fact that it ebbs and flows seems to connect it with the
Thames; and Thames water, when taken opposite Billingsgate, is not
generally considered clear. We again ascend to the ground-floor, which
is a rotunda sixty feet in diameter, covered by a glazed dome
seventy-four feet from the floor. This circular hall has three tiers of
projecting galleries running round it; the floor is composed of 4000
pieces of inlaid wood, in the form of a mariner's compass; in the centre
is the city shield, anchor, &c., the dagger b