thieves!' And they turn their the requirements of an eight dogs on to us, and every day you can hear them bark. ... Finally, I say that without you we can do nothing; with your help we can brush the Lords like chaff before us." Again, at Newcastle, on 8th October 1909: "You may say to us, 'Why do you stand them?' [i.e., the landlords.] Because you force us to stand them. We would have got rid of them long ago. When a Celt has a nail in his boot, he takes it out; but you have been marching on until there is a sore. Have it out!" Speaking at Mile End on the 21st November 1910, he said: "We would say to the Australians, 'Have you anything like this?' [that is, the hereditary peerage.] And they would say, Well, stop minute; we had a few years ago bushrangers (cheers), but we must inform you that they only stole cattle.' 'Oh,' we say, 'cattle won't do; it must be land, and that on a large scale.' 'Well,' says the Australian, 'it really does not matter; we hanged the last of them a short time ago, before they had an opportunity of founding a family. 8 "The Daily Chronicle' (Feb. 21, 1912) admitted that "a few years ago the State enforced on the coal-mining industry an eight-hour working day. Eight hours is quite enough to spend underground in the laborious and hazardous occupation of mining; but it is undeniable that the adaptation of working conditions in the mines to meet hours' day has, in the transitional period, meant new difficulties and extra cost of working to the management. So far as the miners themselves are concerned, the eight hours' day has also produced inconveniences. If the State can now help to mitigate the effects of past State action, it is bound in honour to do so." Will such oratory as this "help to mitigate the effects of past State action"? At any time speeches such as these would be unworthy of any politician, and would even be a source of danger in the mouth of a Cabinet Minister, but uttered and emphasised with the Celtic fervour and eloquence of Mr Lloyd George, at a time when discontent is rife, and a rise in the cost of living has not been accompanied by a proportionate rise in wages, such language is direct incitement to outrage and rebellion. It is the paramount duty of Unionists, therefore, to expose with courage and persistence the fundamental fallacies underlying this "new morality." But the support of the moral conscience of of the country, which, as has been seen, is an essential factor in every successful revolution, will not by itself suffice to carry revolution to victory unless it is supplemented by apt machinery to give effect to its purpose. Such machinery is provided by the Trade Disputes Act, which may well be termed the Charter of Revolution. Without the powers which were given to trade of his capital or his labour unions by this Act, it would as he wills. practically be impossible to engineer a "sympathetic strike. With those powers lying ready for use by unscrupulous leaders, a strike may easily pass into revolution. a The material sections of the Act are "1. An act done in pursuance of an agreement or combination by two or more persons shall, if done in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute, not be actionable unless the act, if done without such agreement or combination, would be actionable. or "2. It shall be lawful for one more persons, acting on their own behalf, or on behalf of a trade union or of an individual employer or firm, in contemplation or further ance of a trade dispute, to attend at or near a house or place where a person resides or works, or carries on business, or happens to be, if they so attend merely for the purpose of peacefully obtaining or communicating information, or of peacefully persuading any person to work or abstain from working. on "4. An action against a trade union, whether of workmen or masters, or against any members or officials thereof behalf of themselves and all other members of the trade union in respect of any tortious act alleged to have been committed by or on behalf of the trade union, shall not be entertained by any court." Broadly speaking, the Trade Disputes Act entitles any person in contemplation or furtherance of a trade dispute to violate with impunity the fundamental right of an Englishman to dispose of his capital or labour as he wills. It entitles trade unions and their agents to commit wrongs without rendering the funds of the trade unions in any way liable to legal process for damages; and by legalising peaceful picketing it in effect enables any person or any number of persons to attend wherever another person may be, to violate his right of personal liberty, and to make his life and that of his family miserable, and, in some cases, too bitter to be endured. The tameness with which "3. An act done by a person Englishmen have submitted to in contemplation or further- be saddled with a statute which ance of a trade dispute shall abrogates their fundamental not be actionable on the rights is some evidence of the ground only that it induces degeneracy of British moral some other person to break a character. However great and contract of employment, or ruinous the wrong which may that it is an interference have been inflicted, no redress with the trade, business, or can be obtained from the trade employment of some other union. If the plaintiff can person, or with the right of prove that the acts by which some other person to dispose his ruin has been brought about have done more than tort which has been conferred upon trade unions and their funds: they are completely protected, and the sections of the Act speak for themselves. Well might Lord Justice Farwell say "It was possible for the courts in former years to defend individual liberty against the oppression of kings and barons, because the defence rested on the law which they administered; it is not possible for the courts to do so when the Legislature alters the laws so as to destroy liberty, for they can only administer the law. The Legislature cannot make evil good, but it can make it not actionable." induce other persons to break their contracts of employment, or to interfere with trade, business, or employment, or with any person's right to dispose of his capital or labour as he wills, he may bring an action against the individual wrongdoer, who will almost certainly turn out to be a man of straw, quite unable to pay any damages or costs which may be awarded against him. But the funds of the trade unions are sacrosanct. Under the provisions of Magna Carta, "no freeman shall be seized or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or in any way brought to ruin," but Magna Carta affords no protection to the victim of a trade dispute. He may have been libelled, as saulted, imprisoned, or otherwise wrongfully treated by the trade union or its agents, yet no liability attaches to the trade union, for an action against a trade union in respect of tort "shall not be entertained by any court." The person wronged may have been financially ruined, he may have been physically undone by the tortious acts of a trade union, yet he is left to reflect that, in the opinion of the Radical Government, he is suffering in a good cause, for it is better that an Englishman's industrial and personal liberty should be destroyed than that the support of the Independent Labour Party should be lost to a Radical adminstration. It is unnecessary to dilate upon the effect of immunity from legal process in respect of It is a psychological axiom that moral and political forces are inextricably intertwined,the one reacts upon the other. As moral enthusiasm engenders physical force, so materialism in politics blunts the moral sense. Is it not at least possible that the moral conscience of the people is in danger of becoming warped, and that appeals to disregard the moral and political principles under which England has developed and prospered will meet in the future with greater success? The repeal of these sections of the Trade Disputes Act would not only not be injurious to the legitimate purposes of trade unions, but it would fulfil the aspirations of the large and increasing body of industrialists, men of the highest grades, who submit to the tyranny of trade union administration for reasons similar to those which cause Roman Catholic loyalists in Ireland to submit to the dietates of the United Irish League, and who would willingly escape from the trammels of a system under which mediocrity is fostered and individual ambition is hampered and discouraged. It is the obvious duty of Unionists to avow their determination to repeal these sections, and it is at least an open question whether such a policy would not prove to be at the same time popular and expedient. In any case, the repeal of this part of the Act would put an end to the "sympathetic" strike and save the country from the inconvenience and the perils of Syndicalism. The argument by which the principles of the Trade Disputes Act has been hitherto supported is without foundation. It is asserted, generally without contradiction, that until the Taff Vale case was decided by the House of Lords in 1901, nobody had ever supposed that the funds of trade unions were liable to sequestration or any legal process, and that the promotion of the Trade Disputes Bill of 1906 was a simple act of justice, undertaken to reinvest trade unions with the privileges which it was the object and the effect of the Trade Union Act of 1871 to confer upon them. Fortunately it is possible to test the validity of this assertion in two ways. If the object of the Act of 1871 had been to protect trade unions from financial responsibility for wrongs committed by them or on their behalf, it is reasonable to expect that clauses to give effect to the proposal would be No found in the Act itself. such provision will be found. The Act is silent on the matter, a circumstance which will go far to negative the truth of the assertion, but the inaccuracy of the argument is conclusively proved by a perusal of the report of the celebrated Royal Commission in 1869, which preceded the introduction of the Bill, and by an examination of the speeches which were delivered during the passage of the Bill itself. No proposal for granting immunity to trade union funds in respect of tort is to be found in the speeches in Parliament or in the report of the Royal Commission. The observation contained in the statement of dissent signed by Mr Frederic Harrison and Mr Hughes, that trade unions ought not to be sued otherwise than in accordance with the provisions of the Friendly Societies Act of 1855 relating to certified societies, does not conflict with the view expressed by the other Commissioners, for under the provisions of the Friendly Societies Act of 1855 the trustees are to be made parties to any action brought against the society which touches or concerns the property of the society, and such actions would include actions for damages for tort. So far from the Commissioners reporting in favour of the immunity of trade unions in respect of tort, the Commissioners state in paragraphs 79 and 80 of the report that "there would be advantage to the unions if they were established with the capacities, rights, and liabilities of Lords was the immunity arising from a state recognised of trade union funds either by law, and we further reoommend that facilities should be granted for such registration as will give to the unions capacity for rights and duties resembling in some degree that of corporations." Indeed, the Commissioners proposed not to lift the trade unions above and outside the law, but to bring them within the pale of the law; not to invest them with special privileges, but to endow them with the rights and obligations which attach to all recognised corporate bodies. The object of the Government in promoting the Trade Union Bill of 1871 was stated by Mr Bruce, the Home Secretary, in the House of Commons on February 14, when the Bill was introduced, in these words: "By the law as it at present stood, these bodies could enter into no binding contract with any third person. Their secretary could not recover at law the salary which might be due to him for his services, nor could the unions maintain an action against their bankers for money deposited on their account, while if they rented premises in case of dispute with their landlord they were without any remedy at law. To remove these disabilities was one of the objects of the Bill. The Bill also proposed to deal with the criminal law as it affected trade unionists and other workmen.” Neither in the House of Commons nor in the House mooted or discussed. Mr Jessel, afterwards SolicitorGeneral and Master of the Rolls, asserted without contradiction on March 14, during the debate on the second reading in the House of Commons, "He wished to point out to the House that this legislation was not fairly obnoxious to the charge of being class legislation. Class legislation was the conferring of special privileges on a single class of the community, or enacting special prohibitions against a single class as distinct from all others;" and the Earl of Morley, in moving the second reading of the Bill in the House of Lords on May 1, 1871, said, "It was his earnest hope that by bringing the unions within the pale of the law, by endeavouring to give publicity to their rules, and by bringing all their good points into the light of day, Parliament would help largely towards the abolition of that feeling of mistrust and antagonism which said to exist, and to some extent doubtless did exist, between Labour and Capital." was The examination of the facts, therefore, demonstrates that there is no shadow of foundation for the assertion that the Trade Disputes Act of 1906 would only be reinvesting trade unions with the privileges which Parliament intended to confer upon them by the Trade Union Act of 1871. Further, the Radical Government in 1906 were under no misapprehension with regard to the |