CHAP. XXXVII. 1838. diately liberated. The Crown witnesses, eleven in number, were so threatened that on their own petition they were committed to jail till the trial, and then sent out of the country at the public expense. At the trial, which lasted six days, the utmost efforts to disturb the course of justice were made. Five-and-twenty jurors were challenged by the prisoners, not one by the Crown. A crowd of two or three thousand unionists surrounded the court every evening when the trial was adjourned, which at length increased to such a degree that five thousand persons were assembled, and military assistance had to be sent for. Under these circumstances it was hardly to be expected that a verdict according to evidence could be obtained. The jury found the prisoners guilty of conspiracy, and they were sentenced to transportation,—but the murder not proven: a result which excited general dissatisfaction, as the evidence was thought to have warranted a general verdict of guilty. This was, two years Feb. 13, after, followed by their being all liberated from confine- 1838; Swinment by Lord Normanby, then Home Secretary, in pur- 372; Persuance of his wholesale system of pardoning criminals, set ledge. on foot in Ireland.1 1 Parl. Deb. ton's Trial, sonal know results of It was now evident, however, that this result was on 56. the whole of a beneficial kind, and that the moral impres- Beneficial sion produced by the proceeding was enhanced by its this trial. having not been followed by the consequences which were generally anticipated. The system was slaughtered by the evidence adduced at the trial, and that is sometimes much better than executing the criminals on the scaffold. Men saw that the trades-unionists used daggers, though they suffered none. The moral effect produced by this memorable trial was immense greater, perhaps, than that of any other within the memory of man; and it was only increased by the generally felt inadequacy of the punishment. There were no moving scenes on the scaffold to lessen the abhorrence at proud turpitude. It led immediately to a committee on the Combination Laws in ParVOL. VI. U XXXVII. 1838. CHAP. liament, which took a great deal of important evidence on the subject, and ended by recommending nothing; the usual result when a great social evil not immediately affecting the interests of any party is under consideration. But the effect of the disclosures made at the trial, in rousing public indignation against the organised atrocities of these trades-unions, has been great and lasting. Strikes, indeed, have continued, and been attended by open violence and intimidation, but no secret system of organised assassination has been again attempted. There have been no more "secret select" committees; on the contrary, though the leaders of strikes often forget to obey their own precepts, they always now set out with deprecating any violation of the law. In the cotton-spinners' trade, this strike led to the general adoption of the self-acting mules, which, by superseding almost entirely the need of the male operative, has ended these strikes in that particular branch of manufacture altogether. 57. Vast im portance of and its general neglect. They have continued, however, in other trades, particularly those of colliers and iron-miners; and there is no the subject, subject that, from its magnitude and distressing consequences, more loudly calls for the intervention of Government. Worse even than plague, pestilence, or famine, combinations among workmen are the greatest social evil which, in a manufacturing or mining community, afflicts society. These, bad as they often are, affect only the bodies of men; but strikes affect their minds. They utterly confound the ideas of right and wrong among immense numbers of the people, by arraying them in hostile bands against their fellow-men, induce a "bellum plusquam civile" in the heart of peaceful society, and in their later stages lead them anxiously to expect the perpetration of the most atrocious crimes for the attainment of what they consider their legitimate rights. They subject tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of persons, innocent of any offence, and anxious only to earn a subsistence by honest industry for themselves and their families, to months of compulsory idleness and real destitution. They XXXVII. 1838. deprive them, often for long periods, of occupation, as CHAP. fatal to their minds as the loss of wages is to their bodies. They band them together in the beginning by the strong attraction of common hope, in the end by the hellish bond of committed wickedness. They subject the immense majority of quiet inoffensive persons to the tyrannical rule of a small minority of violent and ambitious men, who form a secret power, wielding an authority greater than even the triumvirate of Augustus, or the Committee of Public Salvation of Robespierre. Their evils do not terminate with the closing of the strife, and the resumption of labour by the combined workmen; they leave a long catalogue of ills behind them, and for years after the energies of the workmen are depressed by the debt which they cannot discharge, idle habits which they cannot conquer, and crimes into which they have been involuntarily led.* *The following Table, compiled by the sheriff of Lanarkshire from official sources, was laid before the Commons' Combination Committee in 1838, and exhibits a melancholy picture of the disastrous consequences of the mutations of the currency, and consequent combination and strikes in Glasgow, the great manufacturing emporium of the west of Scotland, for sixteen years before 1838: CHAP. XXXVII. 1838. 58. tion paid to them in society. Great as these evils are, and universally as they are felt in all the manufacturing and mining districts, after the occurrence of every monetary crisis, and consequent Causes of the depression of wages, there are no causes of ruin in society little atten- which excite so little permanent interest, or are so unlikely to be removed, either by the enactments of the legislature, or the unaided efforts of private individuals. The reason is, that the evils do not affect the peculiar interests of any influential body in the State, and that their removal requires money, from which all shrink. Government, in general, gives itself very little concern with such social contests, because they are not directed against itself, and do not, immediately at least, threaten the exchequer. They content themselves, therefore, with styling them "local disorders," the cognisance of which properly belongs to the magistrates on the spot, who are in general totally unprovided with any civil force adequate to arrest the evil. No religious party gives itself any concern about them, because they do not involve any difference of creed, and spring only from divisions in regard to temporal interests. The landed proprietors carefully eschew any discussion on the subject, for they have an instinctive conviction that it will terminate in the pronouncing that odious word " assessment." The working classes cling to them as their palladium, their Magna Charta, and regard them as the only means within their power of making wages rise in proportion to the profits of trade and the requirements of their families. Even the masters employing the combined workmen are far from being always averse to strikes; on the contrary, they sometimes secretly encourage, generally largely profit by them. The cessation of production in any branch of trade, of course makes the value of the stock on hand more valuable, and it is often no small comfort to them, when a monetary crisis has occurred, and prices are generally falling, to see the value of their own article continually rising, while at the same time they are relieved from XXXVII. 1838. the disagreeable necessity, during a period of disaster, of CHAP. paying their workmen wages. Thus all classes, from different motives, concur either in secretly encouraging or regarding with supreme indifference these disastrous combinations; and the moment one of them is over, all concerned hasten to banish them from their thoughts, until, like the cholera, the disease returns, after a stated period, to renew its devastations in a society totally unprepared to combat them. 59. strikes are rence. What tends greatly to increase this strange indifference to the greatest social evil which afflicts society, is the Reason why opinion generally entertained that strikes are always of so freunfortunate to the workmen, and therefore that their quent occurgood sense or experience will lead to their discontinuance. There never was a greater mistake. In the great majority of instances strikes are successful; and it is the knowledge of this fact which renders them of such frequent recurrence. It is true, the world in general hears nothing except of those which are unfortunate, because it is for the interest of no one to publish those which are successful, and being soon over, they are as soon forgotten. But they are not forgotten by the workmen, who are encouraged by their frequent successes to try their strength with their masters, in circumstances entirely different, when they are sure to be defeated. The reason is, that they are successful when it is for the interest of the master to retain the men in his service, and unsuccessful when it is for his interest to get quit of them. With a rising market for the produce of their labour, no master will allow his workmen to remain idle as long as any profit remains to himself from their labour. With a falling one, he is too happy of a pretext to get quit of paying them their wages, for the produce of which existing During the great colliers' and iron-miners' strike in 1856, in Scotland, one coalmaster cleared £20,000 by a mass of dross, which, before it began, was absolutely unsaleable, and another £25,000. And the price of coals, which during its continuance was 25s. a-ton, was only 12s. 6d. at its commencement. |