not belonging to any particular club or association, or not having contributed or having refused to contribute to any common fund, or to pay any fine or penalty, or on account of his not having complied, or of his refusing to comply with rules, orders, resolutions, or regulations made to obtain an advance, or to reduce the rate of wages, or to lessen or alter the hours of working, or to decrease or alter the quantity of work, or to regulate the mode of carrying on any manufacture, trade, or business, or the management thereof. 3. If any person shall by violence to the person or property of another, or by threats, or by intimidation, or by molesting, or in any other way obstructing another, force, or endeavour to force, any manufacturer, or person carrying on any trade or business, to make any alteration in his mode of regulating, managing, conducting, or carrying on such manufacture, trade or business, or to limit the number of his apprentices, or the number or description of his journeymen, workmen, or servants.' The above offences are declared to be punishable with imprisonment, with or without hard labour, for not exceeding three months. Now, the point to which we desire to draw the attention of our readers is this-scarcely an act is here prohibited which is not proved by the Evidence to be constantly and notoriously committed, and not unfrequently with circumstances of great aggravation, by the Unions at the present time. The course of action which the statute describes as the subject of its penalties is the standing policy of these bodies. Their rules prescribe it, their records witness to it, their leaders and organs make no secret of it. It is useless to disguise the truth. Except in rare and extreme cases the law is a dead letter. And why is this? Because the same system of terrorism which is employed to coerce the master or the recusant workman is put in force to paralyse the arm of justice. Fear of the vengeance of the Unions outweighs the fear of the law. Employers are afraid to prosecute, witnesses to give evidence, in cases where the agency of these dread tribunals is in question. A witness who appears in court against them must be helped to emigrate as soon as his evidence has been given. The same influence operates to prevent the detection of parties implicated in the most flagrant trade outrages. The authors of the Sheffield atrocities were effectually screened from justice until the indemnity of the new statute brought them to light. The offenders are perfectly well known to numbers on the spot, but through the effect of terror on the one hand and a pernicious esprit de corps on the other, the law is powerless to reach them. The consequences are such as might be anticipated -when the law is unable to afford protection, men are driven to protect themselves. Those who venture to defy the Unions are obliged to defend themselves against illegal violence by force. Hence we read of employers whose works or lives have been threatened going about for weeks together equipped with pistols and revolvers; hiring armed watchmen with fierce dogs to garrison their premises; changing their sleeping places continually; adopting vigilant precautions against malicious injuries or fire. Occasionally, when the need for work is urgent, it is carried on in an actual state of siege, as in the notable instance of the New Law Courts at Manchester, described by Mr. J. Bristow, of Manchester, whose evidence is extremely curious: The new Assize Courts (says this witness) are the best job in Manchester; the woodwork is the best without exception; it was done by Non-Union joiners, who were locked up in the place; they lived, slept, had their washing, had their lodging, in the place, all locked up for fear of the Unionists. It was absolutely done and finished by Non-Union joiners. '5157. When you say "for fear," you mean for fear of being withdrawn by the Union?-For fear of injury. They had to be taken in cabs to the place.' We have noticed but a tithe of the matters which this grave and fertile subject presents for observation; but we believe. that we have said enough. The peaceable, law-respecting people of England will hear, we think, with some surprise, of the high-handed audacity with which these self-erected jurisdictions defy constituted authority and trample upon private rights. It is well that they should hear of it. We desire nothing better than that the full light of publicity should be let in, and that the free air of public opinion should be allowed to penetrate the dark recesses of the Trade Conclaves. We have no doubt as to the verdict which the country will pronounce upon the facts now elicited, because we are convinced that if anything is abhorrent to the nature of Englishmen, it is an inquisitorial tyranny working through the agency of secret tribunals. But the operation of public opinion alone is not enough. The State has a duty to perform to itself and to those whom it undertakes to protect. The supremacy of the law must be vindicated at all costs and hazards. Impunity must no longer be allowed to foster crime. With the text of the law as it stands at present there is little fault to be found. It draws, we believe, the correct line, permitting on the one hand the peaceable combination of workmen in order to the maintenance of their just rights as regards the wages and the hours of labour, prohibiting on the other all violence, annoyance, obstruction, and interference either with masters or with workmen. In the recent prosecution at the Old Bailey, Mr. Baron Bramwell laid down these two cardinal propositions: 1. That the law of England protects the liberty not only of the person, but of the will and mind, of every one of the Queen's subjects. 2. That the public has an interest in the manner in which each individual disposes of his capital and labour. From these two maxims he drew the conclusion that to interfere by intimidation, annoyance, or obstruction, whether physical or moral, with the free agency either of employer or workman, is an offence against society and the law. But though the law be sound in principle, it is almost impotent in practice. A power stronger than the law overrides and defeats its action, rules the reluctant workman with a rod of iron, and smites with its intolerable edicts the skill and enterprise of the capitalist. Such an anomaly must no longer be permitted to endure it has endured much too long already. The conflict between the law of the land and the law of the Unions must be brought to an issue. We look to the Commissioners to suggest means by which the supremacy of rightful authority may be asserted and the hands of justice strengthened. If the aggrieved parties are afraid to act in the repression of violence, the Legislature must no longer dally with the question of a Public Prosecutor. If evidence be stifled by terror, the law must invest itself with greater terrors. Of this let the nation be assured-no intelligent person who has mastered the facts of the case, will doubt it-that unless we would see the sources of our manufacturing prosperity dried up, the arm of our labour paralysed, the sceptre of our trade transferred to other hands, we must grapple firmly and fearlessly, as in a struggle for life or death, with the lawless and overbearing despotism of the Trades' Unions. ART. V. A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters. By the late Mrs. EDGEWORTH, edited by her Children. Not published. In 3 vols. 1867. WE E are afraid of appealing so confidently to the present generation, but are there any survivors of the last who do not habitually associate the name of Maria Edgeworth with a variety of agreeable recollections?-with scenes, images, and characters which were the delight of their youth-with the choicest specimens of that school of fiction in which amusement is blended with utility, and the understanding is addressed simultaneously with the fancy and the heart? All these, and they must still be many, will be rejoiced to hear that a Memoir has recently been printed (though it is as yet unpublished) which may enable them to watch the everyday life of their old favourite, to peep into the innermost folds of her mind, to track her genius to its source, to mark the growth of her powers, and fix how much was the gift of nature and how much the product of cultivation or of art. For ourselves, we were led by it at once to a reperusal of her works; and so satisfactory was the result, that we can confidently recommend a fresh or first trial of them to novel-readers of all ages, who are not utterly spoiled by Miss Braddon and Mrs. Wood. There is another reason for reverting to Miss Edgeworth's writings with unabated interest, independently of their attractiveness. They contributed, more than any others that can be named, towards the inauguration of that splendid era of romance which began and reached its full effulgence with the author of Waverley.' In the General Preface to the collected edition of the Novels, after alluding to the two circumstances which led him to this style of composition, Scott says: The first was the extended and well-merited 'fame of Miss Edgeworth, whose Irish characters have gone 'so far to make the English familiar with the character of their gay and kind-hearted neighbours of Ireland, that she may be truly said to have done more towards completing the Union than perhaps all the legislative enactments by which it has been followed up. Without being so presumptuous as to hope 'to emulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact, which pervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something might be attempted for my own 'country of the same kind with that which she has so fortu'nately achieved for Ireland.' NOTE on the Review of the Life and Writings of Miss Edgeworth,' No. cclviii. p. 458. Shortly after the publication of the last Number of the Edinburgh Review, which contained an article on the Life and Writings of Miss Edgeworth, the following communication was sent to the Publishers of this Journal: Observatory, Armagh, Ireland, Oct. 21, 1867. An article has appeared in the Edinburgh Review, making quotations from the unpublished Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, and stating that such quotations are made by permission.' The Elitors of the Memoir, who only have the power to do so, never gave any such permission. (Signed) To the Editor of the Edinburgh Review. M. P. EDGEWORTH -The Editors. We have only to state in reply that the book was lent to the writer of the article by a near and distinguished relation of the fourth Mrs. Edgeworth (the author of the Memoir), for the express and declared purpose of being reviewed in this Journal, and that he was under the bonâ fide impression that it was so lent with the full knowledge of the family. We were not previously aware that the editors who have honoured us with this communication had any exclusive rights of property over the work; and the approval of another member of their family appeared, and appears, to us sufficient to justify a notice of a Memoir of which two or three hundred copies were already, we believe, in private circulation. As we have occasion to revert to this subject, we take the opportunity of correcting an error (vol. cxxvi. pp. 478-479) which occurs in the Memoir and which escaped our attention. The name of the lady who was supposed to have been the original of Rousseau's Julie' in his 'Nouvelle Heloise,' was not Madame Oudinot but Sophie d'Houdetot. This and many other oversights in the French passages of the Memoir and Letters should be corrected if it is ever given to the public. No. CCLX. will be published in April. |