The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-09-18 00:00:00

THE PRIN. CIPLE OF COMPULSION.

That brings us to one of • the problems which we have to
solve at this time, which is. no easy problem for a man or set
of men, be they House of Commons, or Congress in America,
or Parliament in Germany or anywhere else, and that is,
What can you do 'by law, by the power of Government to
correct those evils and to meet this condition of things?
That is far too big a subject for me to enter upon or to ex-
haust this evening, but there is one particular question
which I should like for a moment to consider, because it
bears a little on what we have to do, and that is, how far can
we rightly bring in the principle of compulsion? That is a
point which is brought before us almost every day we are
sitting in the House of Commons. On the one hand we are
told, "Here are great evils; you can only stop them by
compelling people to do something or by forcing them not
to do something." On the other hand, men will say, "How
has England become great, how do you sit in the House
of Commons itself, except upon the ground that England
Is a free country, and that you are the representatives of
a free people to whom compulsion is a word they ought
to hear as little of as possible ? " (Cheers.) Well, it is
an exceedingly difficult problem, and there is no general
rule for it. Every case has to be decided upon its
merits, but there is a principle which I have come to, the
conclusion ought to guide one in applying the rule and this
is this—that if you do make up your mind that there is any-
thing which it is the business of the State to compel the in-
habitants to do, which it is the business of the English Par-
liament to eompel Englishmen to do, you must not be very
squeamish or very delicate, but you must make all do it. For
instance, I have come to the conclusion that every parent
has duties to his child. I suppose pone of you doubt that.
The question is what those duties are. Everybody says that
a parent ought, if he can, if he has got any possible way of
doing it, find food and clothing for his child. They would
say, if it came to a question between food for himself and
for his child, that his child ought to have it. At any rate,
Ii is his duty to do that, and he ought to. be made to per-
form that duty. Again, we have all of us come to the con-
clusion that a parent is not at liberty to work his young
child independently of the power of that child to work, and
hence our Faetory Laws for, the age of children at our fac-
tories. Well, we are coming, if we have not yet quite come, to
the belief that ft is the duty of the parent to see that the
child has mental food as well as bodily food (cheers), and
that the State ought to tell him,—We hope you will do that
duty; we feel ashamed to compel you to do it, but if you
will not do it without being compelled you must dolt and
you shall do it. (Cheers.) Well, that is an interference
with the freedom of the Englishman, for which I think Eng-
lish feeling is ready. I had something to do with passing a
law which enabled any district or place that thought that it
was time to do it, and I have been told that by so doing I
sanctioned the principle of what is called permissive com-
pulsion—that is to say, coming to the conclusion that there
were certain things which people ought to do, but that the
State might leave it to them whether they did it or not,
provided they came to some arrangement among themselves
upon the matter. I never intended anything of the kind. I
always said it at the time, and have always said it since. I
merely did it in that way because it was impossible to do it
all over the country, and I wanted to try the experiment
and see how it succeeded, and then I should have every strong
argument for doing it elsewhere. The experiment has suc-
ceeded, and whatever may have been the difficulties last
year or may be a year or two hence, I have little doubt that
it will be done throughout the country before long. But I
have spoken rather longer about that than I intended. I
merely mentioned it at first as an illustration. There is
another thing which is a very delicate matter. There
Is the question of vaccination—the question el whether
a parent should or should not take what, In the minds of
most people, is supposed to be is guard against one of the
greatest plagues in the world—viz, smallpox. Without
entering into the subject I think the case is so clearly proved
that we have a right to say, both for the sake of the child and
for the sake of society, you must do what you can to prevent
that child having smallpox, and therefore you must have
him vaccinated. (Cheers.) Those to my mind are pretty
plain instances of the problem which we put before us, but
there are a great many people, and people who have a per-
fect right to express their opinion, and who can defend their
opinion with great ability, who do not agree withal° on these
matters. . . . .

,
THE FRIENDLY NOCIICTIEB BILL.

You know that last year and the year before a good deal of
the time of the House of Commons was occupied with the
Friendly Societies Bill, and we have at last peened an Act.
There are a great many friendly societies in the kingdom,
'some registered, and more or less good, and some not regis-
tered, and a great many very unsound; and a great many
persons said, "You ought in your law to stop these unsound
societies; there are hundreds of thousands of men and
women who are giving their savings week by week through-
out the country, and nobody who has any sort of notion
of the business of these societies will say that they
can get back what they are giving. Surely you ought
not to allow such a state of things to go on" I don't
deny that that there is a good deal to be said about that
argument, but I was not one to agree with it. I thought
that would be a point on which we law makers would
be going too far. However much we may advise a
man to do it, we have no right to say "You shall
save, and if you save, you must invest in certain societies."
I think if we attempted to do it we should do more harm
than good, for men would rely on our interference in
this matter, and the effort of the individual would probably
be much less than it is at this moment. There is one
matter in which I should like to see the Bill made more
stringent than it is. I don't think it would have been
necessary for your society; in fact, the Commissioners say,
and I agree with them, and it is one of the greatest
arguments in favour of your society, that if they
bad to deal with the Oddfellows only, they would have
thought no Act of Parliament necessary, but would have
left them to their own powers of action. But this I
hould have liked to see. The Government regis-
ters societies which gives them certain privileges, such
as the power of suing .and going to law, which one
would not think was a privilege. !Hear.) At the same time
they state to the country that they are registered, and in
doing so they give a kind of impression that they are safe.
All those who really look into the matter know that the
Government does not guarantee their safety or soundness by
so doing; but still it does give them some privileges, and
enables them to use the Government name, and therefore I
thought the late Act ought to have been made a little more
stringent. I think the two things which you do ought to
have been made compuleory in all societies—that is, a real
and satisfactory audit and a five-year valuation. It is in no
way made compulsory now, but there is no security taken
that the auditors shall be responsible auditors, or that their
valuation shall be made by vesponsible valuers, and I
should have been disposed, at the risk of some in-
convenience, to make that compulsory on societies
generally, although not on your account. I never can
came to any na.evement which seems to be interesting at
the present without having some notion of the future. I
believe that is the difference between a Liberal and a Con-
servative. (Laughter.) I always feel as if one must have the
future before one's eyes. I look forward to a speedy future,
in which some men will arise, probably among yourselves,
who have the same power of working together, and produce
societies as influential, as numerous, and as well managed
as the Oddfellows, but which shall provide not merely
against sickness, net merely fot%a decent funeral, but also
against old age, and enable each man and each woman
among our working classes to feel that they can respect
these beautiful words of Burns, knowing that their own
words will not give them the lies—
"To catch Dame Fortune's golden smile,
Assiduous wait upon her,
And gather gear by every wile
That's justified by honour:
Not for to hide it in a hedge,
Nor for a train attendant
But for the glorious privilege
Of being independent."
Although Burns himself wrote those lines he did not, per-
haps, make them for the class which he ennobled—the
working men among whom he lived. They seemed to apply
at his time to other classes, but such has been the progress
over the past, such is the hope we may have in the future,
that those lines may now apply as well to the working man
as to any other man in the kingdom. (Cheers.)

.itt '