unless it is used for an object criminal in itself, and that intimidation be defined so as to limit it to threats of violence (The Times, September 5). After adopting this report at its second sitting, the congress went beyond it, and concluded its final meeting with the following unopposed resolution:

'That the Parliamentary Committee be instructed to draft 'such amendments to the Conspiracy and Property Act as 'will clearly define "intimidation" to mean only where 'threats of violence are used; shall abolish the penalty of ' imprisonment for a first offence where no violence is used; ' and will provide that workmen shall be tried by juries of "" their peers (The Times, September 11).

If these recommendations should become law, any combination of trade unionists would no longer be liable to a charge of ordinary conspiracy, such as that on which two men were convicted in the Glasgow Sheriff Court on March 30, for conspiring to deprive a non-unionist of his livelihood by threatening to withdraw all trade unionists from the same employment, and would be able to expel any nonunionists from employment in the same concern as themselves by threatening to withdraw all unionists, not only from that concern, but also from concerns dealing with it. A combination would also be able, and with impunity so long as no threats of violence were used, to terrify, as multitudes of men on strike can terrify, anybody who dared to apply for employment in place of the strikers. Moreover, each trade unionist could be used in succession to threaten violence without being imprisoned for a first offence. Finally, even if they used violence they would be tried by juries of their peers'; but would they be convicted?

The result of such privileges would be that the Conspiracy Law would be too weak to protect the freedom of labour. Nobody outside the combination would dare to apply for employment, or, if he did, no employer would dare to engage him. At

present the influence of such other persons, to use the words of the Parliamentary Committee of the Trade Union Congress, is often the sole or principal reason why unionists are unable to raise their wages or alter the conditions of their employment. But if the Conspiracy Law could only be weakened, if trade unionists could combine to injure without criminally conspiring, terrify without intimidating, each intimidate in succession so as to escape imprisonment for the first offence, and at the worst be tried by their peers', then they could neutralize the influence of such other persons by deterring them from competing with them for employment. Each particular combination of trade unionists would then obtain a monopoly of employment in each concern; and the whole body of trade unionists would obtain a monopoly of employment in all concerns which employ them, or deal with concerns in which they are employed, on pain of the boycott. Now, 1,302,855 trade unionists were represented at the congress, according to Mr. Judge, of its Standing Orders Committee; while, according to Mr. Ben Tillett, 9,000,000 workmen are at present unorganized (The Times, September 10). In this case a minority would have a monopoly of employment against a large majority of workmen, at the expense of the whole population of Great Britain. Yet Mr. Burt, M.P., said that special privileges, monopolies, and sinecures would have to be swept away; when he was actually presiding over an attempt to establish the most stupendous monopoly hitherto contemplated.

We may illustrate the further consequences of a monopoly of employment under a weak Conspiracy Law by its bearing on the burning question of shortening the hours of labour. So long as the Conspiracy Law is effectual enough to protect the freedom of employment, the mere shortening of

the hours of labour cannot be established without ultimately diminishing the wages paid to each man for shorter hours. At first, perhaps, the same wages would be paid; but as it is chimerical to suppose that everywhere men would do as much work in shorter hours as they did before, more hands would be required—that is, the cost of production would rise, and so would prices. The demand would then contract, and prices would have to fall again. Thereupon in a state of free labour wages as well as profits would be diminished, with the result that more men would be employed for shorter hours at less wages. This is not what trade unionists want; they want shorter hours with the same, or higher, wages. But now, suppose that they could first weaken the Conspiracy Law so as to obtain a monopoly of employment. Why, then, if the hours of work were also shortened, the same effects would follow, except the last. On the ultimate fall of prices to the level of demand, instead of sharing the loss between wages and profits, as they could not help doing in a condition of free labour, they could now, as monopolists of employment, under a weak Conspiracy Law, defy the employer either to engage other workmen or to reduce their own wages, if he is to get any work done at all. Hence the employer would have to maintain high wages of more men at shorter hours, and suffer the whole loss entailed by high cost of production at low prices out of his own profits.

It is a mistake to discuss the question of shortening the hours of labour by itself; we must look at the labour question as a whole. When we consider the objects of trade unionists together we cannot avoid, nor could they prevent, the sequence that to weaken the Conspiracy Law would be to deter competition for employment; which would give a monopoly of employment to combinations of trade

U

unionists; which would enable them to shorten hours without diminishing wages; which would require more workmen at the same wages from trade unions; which would raise the cost of production all round, not demand, nor permanent prices; which would, without affecting the wages of the monopolists of employment, diminish the profits of the employer. So long as the monopoly of employment could be maintained, under a weak Conspiracy Law, the monopolists could even go on raising their wages until they had absorbed the remaining profits. Thereupon, workmen would have become practical owners.

Meanwhile not all the profits would have remained. The greater part of realizable capital would have gradually and imperceptibly been diffusing itself over more profitable parts of the globe. Hence the trade union monopolists would have to some extent enriched themselves, and become small capitalists, and this is perhaps enough for them; but the great majority of workmen would be worse off than before, and the country would have lost capital. It is to be hoped, therefore, that the Government will be wise enough not to weaken the Conspiracy Law, which alone can ensure the freedom of labour against monopoly. I agree that intimidation needs definition. But if the Conspiracy Law is to be amended for the general good, the question is not how to weaken it so as to give a trade unionist minority a monopoly of employment, but how to strengthen it so as to protect the freedom of employment against violence, threats of violence, terrifying mobs, persecutions, boycotting, and all combinations, which want both to strike work and to prevent work with impunity. Notwithstanding the noise of trade unionism, Socialism, and sentimentalism, I believe it is the interest as well as the duty of the present Ministry to stand firm. Freedom of ownership, of employ

6

ment, of contract, must, one would think, command a vast majority in all classes, high and low, against a minority-a million or two-of workmen, as the trade unionists themselves confess they are, unjustly attempting to create for themselves an artificial monopoly of employment, if not of ownership. Nevertheless, an effort is needed, for elections are apt to be turned by a solid minority, pursuing a definite end, between opposite parties. Oxford.

MR. GLADSTONE AND THE LAW OF
CONSPIRACY

Mr. Gladstone's speech at the Holborn Restaurant was delivered on December 11, 1891, at a breakfast to the delegates to the Rural Labourers' Conference. He said: We must get rid of that common law of conspiracy . . . and we must provide for the rural population of this country as well as for the population of Ireland, that nothing shall be a crime in relation to the prosecution of labour interests because it is done by a combination of men, unless it be in itself an offence against the letter and the spirit of the law of the land."' Edmund Robertson was Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and Member of Parliament for Dundee. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Admiralty from 1905 to 1908, and was created a peer under the name of Baron Lochee of Gowrie in 1908. He died in 1911.

FROM The Times, DECEMBER 26, 1891.

By the common law of conspiracy an act which is lawful when done by one person becomes criminal when done by a combination of persons. Mr. Gladstone, in his speech on rural reform at the Holborn Restaurant, says: We must get rid of that common law of conspiracy.' But, as Mr. S. Ronan, Q.C., has pointed out in his letter to you of to-day, the law is just, because a combination is more dangerous than one man; the principle of the law is the protection of individual liberty against combined oppression; and the effect of its abolition would be to allow a combination to ruin a man by conspiring to commit