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

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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

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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

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injurious acts against him, provided no such act is in itself a specific crime.

I have already by your kindness pointed out in your columns the marked anxiety of the Trade Union Congresses of 1890 and 1891 to get the law of conspiracy so altered as to be even more favourable to their interests than it is at present. At present, by Section 7 of the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act of 1875, workmen may combine to injure their masters, so long as they abstain from an act which would be a crime when done by one man; but by the common law of conspiracy, whether they do an act which would be a crime when done by one man or not, they may not combine to injure a fellow-workman. What the trade unionists perceive is that, if they could assimilate the common law of conspiracy to the special Section 7 of the Act of 1875, their combinations would be no longer liable to be accused of criminally conspiring against a fellow-workman. This is admitted by Mr. Edmund Robertson, M.P., who last Session brought forward a Bill to amend the law of conspiracy, who prepared the memorandum on the present state of the law for the Trade Union Congress of this year, and who has been requested by the congress to bring forward the Bill again next Session. In a letter to you on the subject (The Times, October 28), he says:

The Act of 1875 is limited strictly to trade disputes between 'employers and employed. Combinations of working men 'which cannot be brought within that category are exposed ' to the full rigour of the common law doctrine of conspiracy. Not long ago some trade unionists were punished as con'spirators under the common law because there was no evi'dence of a dispute between employer and employed. A dispute between masters and men is protected, a dispute 'between two sections of the men is not.'

From these admissions it is plain that the common law of conspiracy protects, not masters, but workmen against combinations of workmen, and that the

abolition of the law would enable workmen to combine, not against a master-that they can do already --but against a fellow-workman. The common law of conspiracy is the sole protection of workman against workmen. Yet Mr. Gladstone says: "We must get rid of that common law of conspiracy.' In his speech on rural reform he enunciated with more than his usual definiteness this new article of Gladstonian policy, in the name of liberty, and as the general interest of the labouring population. But what liberty? The liberty, he said, of the labouring population to combine for the purpose of giving the greatest value they can to their labour. But they have this liberty. Really, the abolition of the common law of conspiracy would give some workmen the unjust liberty of combining against others, and would deprive other workmen of the just liberty of freely contracting for employment. Nor could such combined tyranny be the general interest of the working classes. It would be the immediate interest of trade unions. But the trade unions are not the working classes. At their last congress the trade unionists themselves admitted that only 1,302,855 were represented, while 9,000,000 workmen are still unorganized. The real question is whether the abolition of the common law of conspiracy would be for the good of all workmen, organized and unorganized. At present, if a combination of workmen conspire to prevent an unorganized workman from being employed, they can be punished as criminal conspirators under the common law. If Mr. Gladstone gets rid of that common law of conspiracy, an unorganized workman would have no redress against such a combination of workmen. This, no doubt, would be pleasant for the minority of workmen who are combined in trade unions; but how would it be to the interest of the majority of the working classes? December 21.