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Untitled Article
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Untitled Article
fair field for pursuing a just end by just means—and they will be formidable indeed . We do not pretend that they ought to be tolerated in using compulsion , either against employers or fellow-workmen . If , as
We believe often happens when outrages are committed , the reluctance of the operatives to inform against each other renders it impossible to bring the perpetrators to justice , this is a valid ground for enforcing such restraints , of the nature of police regulations , as may render the commission of such offences more difficult , or detection more easy .
Anything more would be wholly unjustifiable . There has ? been much cant about tyrannizing over masters , because the workmen chose to annex conditions to the contract by which they agreed to labour for the profit of others . The conditions might be foolish , or they might be wise ; but , whatever they were , the men had a perfect right to insist upon them , as long as
they neither had nor sought any means of enforcing the requisition but by exercising their undoubted right of refusing to work . If they had said they would not work for less than five hundred a year each , it would have been silly enough , but surely no tyranny . The language in which the demands of the Unions were made , is said to have been , at times , overbearing . This is neither more nor less foolish or reprehensible , than an
equally offensive style when used by employers . From vulgar minds in either rank , we must expect vulgar pretensions . But until , in the progress of cultivation , insolence shall become an unfrequent accompaniment of power , we ought to rejoice that one side has no longer the monopoly of it . Any relation is preferable to that in which one party may inflict , and the other must bear . When both can presume , both are near to feeling the good of forbearance .
To suggest the proper precautions against the offences liable to arise from Trades' Unions , local experience is requisite . One regulation which could not fail to be useful , would be the enforcement of publicity . We see no reason why all associations should not be declared illegal , whose statutes are not registered in some public office . The enactment under which the Dorsetshire
labourers were convicted , was , we think , a salutary one . The Jmrdship was in not remitting their sentence , when the trial had given the requisite publicity to the law . Promissory oaths are bad enough when imposed for state purposes , and by the authority of the Legislature . It is out of the question that
individuals should be permitted to impose upon others , even with their consent , a religious obligation to persevere in conduct of which their consciences may cease to approve . But the Unions are not wedded to these mischievous ceremonies . It was enough to promulgate the fact that they vrere illegal . The trial at
Untitled Article
86 &ote * on the Kewmmm .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1834, page 366, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2633/page/54/
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