The law cannot admit any jurisdiction but its own to tax, to punish, or coerce the Queen's subjects. And if Free Trade is indeed to be the rule of our commercial policy, we must grapple once more with that spectre of Protection, which reappears in no questionable shape, though backed by allies of a different class and stamp from those who were subdued or silenced in the great controversy of twenty years ago.

From the credit which may be claimed for the present Administration for undertaking to cope with this formidable question we are not disposed to detract by the consideration that such an interposition had plainly become inevitable. The defiance of the law, the impunity of crime and outrage, had culminated to a point which admitted no longer of hesitation or delay. What is more, the action of the Executive had been distinctly invoked on behalf of both parties to the controversy, the masters and the associated workmen. The employers, no less than the general public, appealed to the protection of the law under a state of things in which neither life nor property were secure; while the Unions themselves, indignant, or professing so to be, at finding outrages and crimes laid at their door which they declared to be abhorrent to their rules and principles, loudly demanded inquiry as a means of vindicating their character. From Sheffield itself, the scene of repeated and flagrant acts of violence in which workmen had been the sufferers, from the Unions of that town which, more perhaps than any other, lay under the suspicion of having been concerned in some ferocious deeds, arose the cry for investigation. The voice of the public being thus unanimous, a Commission was determined on. The choice of Commissioners for such a function was a task of some difficulty; but it is due to Mr. Walpole, whose official career closed somewhat unprosperously, to say that in the selection which he made the qualifications requisite to ensure a complete and impartial inquiry were judiciously secured. At the head of the Commission was placed one to whose award any disputants, however rancorous, might be well content to submit their quarrel. The mitis sapientia of Sir W. Erle, his practised sagacity and large experience, united with that kindliness of nature which, as it had endeared him throughout his long career to the Bench and Bar, had manifested itself also in a consistent, yet always temperate leaning to the popular sidesuch qualities and antecedents rendered the ex-Chief Justice an arbitrator whom none could challenge. The Government were fortunate in securing as his associates men of sound and clear views on economical questions like Mr. Merivale and Sir Edmund

Head: others who had laboured to enlighten and conciliate the working class, as Lords Lichfield and Elcho; Mr. F. Harrison, the able advocate of Trades' Unions in the press, and Mr. T. Hughes, their spokesman in Parliament. These, with a suitable mixture of other elements, including that fearless utterer of hard truths and scourge of popular heresies, Mr. Roebuck, formed, it will hardly be denied, a competent and impartial tribunal.

The Commissioners have taken a considerable amount of Evidence, which they have judiciously printed from time to time, with a view, we suppose, to keep the public mind informed upon the subject, without waiting for the time, which must necessarily be somewhat prolonged, of issuing their Report. Their investigations have hitherto been confined to the operation of one department of industry, which, however, comprehends several distinct branches the building trade. They have had before them the secretaries and officers of the Unions of the Amalgamated Engineers, the Carpenters and Joiners, the Masons, the Bricklayers, the Plasterers, the House Painters, and other cognate trades; and, on the other hand, the case of the Master Builders has been fully laid before them by some leading members of that body, but especially by the Secretary of the General Builders' Association, Mr. A. Mault, an able and efficient representative of their cause. The inquiry, therefore, which now stands adjourned till November, has, up to this date, traversed but a part of the large field over which it is destined to extend, yet the evidence already taken is so important, and involves so many of those points on which it is necessary that public opinion should be formed, that we believe we shall be doing a service to the community and helping to promote the objects of the Commissioners, if we draw attention, at this early stage, to some of the more prominent facts and features of the case as already elicited from the witnesses examined.

The subject of Trades' Unions has various sides and aspects, and it would be easy to fill a volume without exhausting the field of observation which it presents. It has its historical side, which comprehends the great struggle between Capital on the one hand and Labour striving to gain a lever from combination on the other, with all the interventions which legislation has made into that contest, from the earliest period of organised industry in this country to the present time. has its legal side, which involves some questions of doubt and obscurity, upon which eminent lawyers have differed, and judicial decisions are not in exact accordance, as regards the

It

status, under the common or the statute law, of these Associations. Lastly, it is pregnant with a large range of questions within the province of Political Economy, upon which, indeed, that science, as we interpret it, pronounces no doubtful answers, but which are by no means received without challenge, either by those who profess to recognise the legitimacy of economic principles, or by others who boldly assert that the science of National Wealth is itself but a portion of, and should be subordinated to, a higher social code. From a large portion of the matters included under all these heads of inquiry we are peremptorily debarred by want of space; we shall neither entangle our readers in a legal disquisition which, in the pages of this Review, would be out of place and distasteful, nor shall we plunge them into a discussion of those cardinal principles which regulate capital, wages, and trade. But we shall aim at setting forth in a manner intelligible to the ordinary reader, and without vexing him with dry professional details, the position in which, according to the best judgment we can form, the Trades' Unions as now carried on in this kingdom actually stand before the law; and we shall endeavour, with an equal avoidance of technical specialities, to show what are the true bearing and natural effect of those rules and practices which it is the aim of these combinations to enforce, and with what consequences they are fraught to the workmen themselves, to their employers and to the national interests, according to those principles of public economy which are recognised by the highest authorities, and which have been stamped with the deliberate and recent sanction of the Legislature.

In the first place, however, it is necessary, with as much brevity as possible, to take account of some prominent facts of the case with which we have to deal. And first as to the extent and constitution of these Associations. It appears that almost every trade and industry in the kingdom of any importance has its Union; and this is true, not only of what are termed the skilled trades, but of the unskilled labouring classes also, excluding only the agricultural. The total number of these Associations has been stated to be not less than 2,000. Mr. Mault has given the Commissioners some statistical information as to the proportion of Unionists in the building trade :

'According to the last census,' he tells them, 'there were in Great Britain 856,472 persons immediately connected with the building trades. Of plumbers, glaziers, and painters, I estimate that 8,000 are connected with the Unions, or about 9 per cent. Of brickmakers I estimate that only 2,500 are connected with the Unions, or about 6 per cent. Of labourers and the other trades not mentioned,

there may be in the aggregate 18,000 connected with the Unions. This estimate gives a total of 90,500 Unionists connected with the building trades, or about 10 per cent. of the whole number of operatives of all branches connected with the trade.' (Evid. 2968.)

It should be remarked, however, that Mr. Mault is here taking the average of the whole kingdom; but there can be no doubt that Unionism is much more concentrated in certain localities than in others, and that in particular districts the proportion of Union to Non-Union men is very different from the above. Thus Mr. J. M'Donald, President of the Glasgow Master Builders' Association, tells the Commissioners that with regard to Glasgow there are between 80 and 90 per cent. ' of them connected with the building trade who are members ' of the Unions; and, taking in all departments of trade, there are little short of 80 per cent.' Another witness states that the proportion of Unionists in Manchester, in the joiners' trade, is 90 per cent. The same state of things probably exists in other large centres of industry. But even in cases where the Unionists are the minority, it is easy to understand whence they derive a power greatly disproportioned to their numbers. Being asked how it is that the employers plus the large majority of Non-Unionists in the building trade are not able to resist the will of the Unionist minority, Mr. Mault answers :

6

'I explain it in this way, that 10, or 15, or 20 per cent. (in the case of the plasterers it is considerably more) who are thoroughly united for the attainment of any object are likely to attain it as against the rest who are not united at all, and have no common object, or no common means of pursuing the object, and who, consequently, are really taken in detail.' (Evid. 3441.)

With regard to the objects of these Associations it is material to observe that there are two classes of Unions, viz. the Trades' Union pure and simple, which aims only at protecting the supposed interests of the workman as against the employer; and secondly, the Trades' Union which combines that object with the character of a Friendly or Provident Society, and which undertakes to secure to its members certain benefits of allowance in sickness or accident, superannuation in old age, and payments in aid of funeral and other expenses. It may be noticed in passing, that the combination of two such incongruous objects is one of the most dangerous elements of these bodies, so far as their financial soundness is concerned. The same revenue which forms the insurance fund for the sick or disabled workman, is liable to bear the exhausting drain of a strike, and is the purse from which the capitalist is to be fought with his own weapons. It is needless to point out the danger to

which such a financial misjoinder,' as the lawyers would call it, must expose the workman who fondly supposes that in contributing year after year to the funds of the Union, he is making a sure provision against a rainy day.' But this is not the worst of the case. The trade rules of the Union, in addition to the risk of causing an exhaustive drain upon the funds, may have the further effect of tainting the Society itself with illegality, and leaving its members without remedy in case of pillage or embezzlement of their property. In the case of Hornby v. Close, it was decided by the Court of Queen's Bench in January last, that a Trades' Union, which is also a benefit society, but which has among its rules any which in the judgment of the law amount to a restraint of trade,' is ipso facto deprived of the right of recovering from a defaulting treasurer, to which the members of a benefit society would be entitled under the Friendly Societies' Act. We are free to own that we do not altogether like this indirect mode of punishing the Trades' Unions; nor are we quite satisfied to leave the discretion of deciding what is a restraint of trade,' which may chance to be a nice question of Political Economy, to the legal tribunals-but such is the law. But a more serious question still impends over the financial position of these bodies. Independently of all draughts on their resources which a war with their employers may occasion, and of all inroads on their funds which the law may refuse to take notice of, there is reason to believe that, regarding them as benefit societies alone, their financial basis is utterly unsound. Mr. Mault has examined in detail the benefits held out by the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners, compared with the means which their rules provide for meeting these liabilities. The benefits offered are thus set forth in their own Circular::

6

The social character of the amalgamation may be described as follows: Tool benefit to any amount of loss, or 57. when a member six months; donation benefit when out of employment for 12 weeks, 10s. per week; ditto for 12 weeks, 6s. per week; for leaving employment satisfactory to Branch or Executive Council, 15s. per week; sick benefit for 26 weeks, 12s. per week, or so long as illness continue, 6s. per week; accident benefit, 1007.; emigration benefit, 67.; superannuation benefit for life, if a member 25 years, 8s. per week; superannuation benefit for life, if a member 18 years, 7s. per week, and superannuation benefit for life, if a member 12 years, 5s. per week; funeral benefit, 127., or when a member six months, 37. 10s. ; entrance fee, 7s. 6d. under 25 years of age, increasing to 25s. up to 40 years of age, above which no member can be admitted; contributions Is.